


Babylon Is Fallen

by PR Zed (przed)



Series: Babylon Is Fallen [1]
Category: 28 Days Later (2002), The Professionals
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-21
Updated: 2010-09-21
Packaged: 2017-10-15 17:43:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 29,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/163256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/przed/pseuds/PR%20Zed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he awakens from a coma to discover a London destroyed by a zombie plague, Ray Doyle sets out to find a refuge against infection and, so he hopes, Bodie. A crossover with the 28 Days Later universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Exodus

Bodie woke in the dark, flat on his back, with blood in his mouth. He prayed the blood was his own and that the end would come quickly.

Fucking Cowley, sending them here. He should have fucking known better. A secret research facility in Essex that wasn't answering its calls? Fuck. And Cowley had ordered a general call out: all available agents to attend. He might as well have sent a flock of lambs into a pack of ravening wolves.

Lucas and McCabe had been the first to die, cut down moments after they'd entered the installation by things none of them could understand. There had been movement and speed and blood, and then they were running, all semblance of training and discipline gone to hell.

Anson had been the first to turn. He'd barely had the time to wipe the blood out of his eye before the change had started. The rest of them had watched in disbelief as a trusted, if irritating, colleague had torn into them. There was more blood, more screaming.

They'd fallen back, then, the few of them left. Attacked on all sides, waiting for their own to become the enemy, whatever that enemy was. Then Bodie had been struck and blacked out, and now he was waiting for death, or not-death, hoping Ruth would put a bullet in his head if he turned until he remembered what Ruth had turned into.

Something grabbed the back of his collar and started to pull. He struggled and thrashed, realizing he still wanted to live, that all hope had not left him.

"Bodie." Murph's voice was tense, panicked, as far from his usual unflappable calm as was possible. "Get up, you stupid fucker. Run!"

Bodie got up. He ran. They cleared the facility, breaking into the weak sunlight with those things on their heels, nearly the entire A squad fitting into one Capri. Bodie held his head in his hands as Jax climbed in beside him, Murphy pulled out of the car park with a squeal of tires, and Sally called Control. Bodie only heard a few words in his haze. "All lost" and "firebomb" and "nuke".

 _Ray_ , he thought, closing his eyes tightly against the images of bloodshot eyes and bared teeth ravaging his memory. _Where the fuck are you, sunshine?_

* * *

Doyle swam up through a sea of confusion, pain and thirst and screaming and red and fear flowing and crashing over him, threatening to drown him. Panic drenched him, swamped him, made him fight through the darkness until he emerged at the surface, emerged into the light, gasping and blinking, struggling to make sense of the place in which he found himself.

It was a hospital room. He could tell that by the stained ceiling tiles above him, the hulking machines surrounding him, the lumpy mattress under him. But there was something wrong.

He was alone for a start. No nurses, no doctors, and, most importantly, no Bodie. Few were the times he'd woken up in hospital without the half-Irish son of a bitch sitting beside him.

He was also surrounded by silence.

He'd been in a lot of hospitals—rather too many, really—and the one thing he knew about hospitals was they were never silent. There were always nurses chattering about pills and treatments and the nearest wine bar, and visitors nattering on about how the roses had blight this year. There were always machines beeping, and lights buzzing, and some poor bastard down the hall moaning in pain.

But not now. The machines surrounding him were silent, the lights weren't on, and there was no human voice chatting or moaning. Bloody power must be off, he thought. But hospitals always had backup generators. He knew that much, even if he didn't have a fucking clue how he'd ended up in this bed.

Doyle blinked and fought to focus, to think, to remember. He tried to sit up, gasping in pain as he caught the IV line running into one arm. He gritted his teeth and pulled the needle out, the empty IV bag just one more thing that was wrong about this day.

"Hello," he tried to call out, but his voice was dust in his throat. He grabbed at the jar on the stand beside him, his arm shaking from the effort as he greedily swallowed the water it contained.

The water helped. He eased out of the bed, and crossed to the door, only to find it locked.

"Hello!" His voice was coming back, but he could hear the panic in it. Who the fuck locked a hospital room? And why? He pushed against the door, but the only thing that gave way was his own strength, and he collapsed to the floor, the flimsy hospital gown flapping around him. Frustration nearly overwhelmed him, but then he caught a flash of metal on the floor beside him. The key.

More grateful than a raw recruit who's just been bought a round by George Cowley, he unlocked the door, and found more nothing. No nurses, no doctors, no patients, no visitors. Nothing and no one.

He moved to the nurses' station and picked up a phone. He had to call Bodie. Or Cowley. Or anyone at CI5. Surely they'd know what was going on. But the phone line was as dead as the lights. He tried every phone on the floor, and not one of them worked.

He had to get back to HQ, and not in this fucking gown. He found a set of scrubs in a linen cupboard, a pair of too-big shoes in a locker room, and changed in front a mirror that offered some explanation of why he'd found himself in a fucking hospital: his face had the fading remnants of bruises down one side, and half his curls had been shaved to reveal a half-healed jagged scar. He touched the scar gingerly, wondering how the fuck he'd got it when the last thing he remembered was being behind the wheel of his Capri and hearing Cowley himself order a callout to a secured facility in Essex. Had he been in a car accident? Had he been injured in the raid? Was it something to do with the mysterious absence of all people in the hospital?

Well, there was no way of finding out here, so he headed for the stairs.

It took him a long time to reach the ground floor. He'd been overwhelmed with dizziness twice on the way down, and had to sit down once when his legs had given out. When he finally emerged from the stairwell into the lobby, he found it in worse shape than the ward. Furniture was strewn about, curtains had been ripped off a window, and there were suspicious brown stains on the floor. But there were no bodies, and still no people who could answer his questions.

He emerged into the light of an overcast and eerily silent afternoon in front of Guy's Hospital. The building was surrounded by a chain link fence, one that was nearly torn down in places, and there were buses and vehicles parked haphazardly on both sides of the barrier.

He turned west, towards Westminster and headquarters and, so he hoped, Bodie. Bodie would know what was going on. Bodie would help.

Bodie was all the safety he needed.

* * *

They made it to headquarters in one piece, and without a bomb dropping on their heads, though later Bodie would wonder if it wouldn't have been better if some RAF Air Marshall had decided to nuke Essex and London from the face of the earth and be done with it.

CI5 was buzzing with activity, with the surviving A squad looking grim and the B squad looking like they were about to throw up. They delivered their report to Cowley directly, Bodie, Sally, Murphy and Jax, though none of them could quite agree on the details, and all of them made it sound like they'd lived through a penny dreadful novel. Which they had, really.

"Has anyone heard from Doyle?" Bodie asked, breaking into Jax's narrative of Anson's transformation. "Was he there? Did he make it back?"

"4.5 has not been heard from since the incident," Cowley said sharply, the expression on his face enough to drain all hope from Bodie's heart.

"But was he there?" Bodie pressed, willing to hear a hard truth, as long as he heard the truth. He wanted to be sure Cowley wasn't protecting him from Ray's death, wasn't ensuring one of his agents would work to full potential when he needed him most. As if he wouldn't always be a professional.

"He was responding, like the rest of you. But he had further to go. He was following up a lead in Hammersmith. Thought he'd caught wind of those IRA bombers you two were chasing down."

"And after? When Sally reported in?"

"After I heard from Sally, I pulled all remaining agents back to headquarters. Doyle should have heard the recall." Cowley took a deep breath and looked at Bodie with a gaze that mixed steel with a small dose of compassion. "If he was able to hear it."

"But he's not here?"

"No. We've had no word from him." Cowley waved off Betty as she brought in a stack of folders, giving Bodie more time than he probably deserved. "There are half a dozen agents missing, besides the ones you've accounted for."

"But you'll let me know. If you hear anything."

Cowley nodded, before he pushed them out of the office. Bodie was already planning out his search for Ray as he overheard Cowley ask Betty to get Downing Street on the phone.

Things were bad, and looking to get so very much worse. If this was how London, how England was going to end, Bodie was going to make very sure that he faced that end with Raymond Doyle at his side.

* * *

Someone had given Doyle a book when he was a teenager, something about giant plants taking over the world. He'd thought it was a bit of a laugh at the time, but it came to mind now as he walked through a London completely devoid of people, living or dead.

He'd often complained about the crowds and the traffic of central London, but now he'd have given anything for a proper traffic jam. For horns sounding and yobbos shouting at each other. The only sounds he could hear as he reached the Embankment were the wind whispering through alleys between buildings and the caws of a few stray crows. He wondered if the ravens had got out of the Tower. He'd had a teacher, old Mrs MacGruder, who liked telling them the legend of the ravens. How if the ravens ever left the Tower of London, a great disaster would befall England. It looked like the old girl's disaster had finally arrived.

He still felt weak, but he'd been trained to ignore weakness. He crossed the river at Charing Cross Bridge, then carried on toward Westminster, walking in the middle of the road and wishing more than ever before that he had his weapon with him. Having no one, absolutely no one, around was even more unnerving than being surrounded by enemies.

As the Houses of Parliament drew closer, Doyle found himself hoping that he'd find soldiers and barricades. He found the barricades, an imposing metal fence, but no soldiers, which only added mystery upon mystery.

And then he found a partial answer.

A newspaper drifted in front of him, just one of the millions of pieces of paper he'd seen since he'd left Guy's, one of the many pieces of detritus that was building up, now that there were no workers to clean them up. He wasn't sure why he picked up this particular newspaper, but he did. It was the front page of the Standard, and the headline was one word: Evacuation.

England was being evacuated. Had been evacuated.

There were references to a virus and infection and violence, but none of it made sense to him, not while he was still dealing with the impossible become reality.

England emptied of her people. Jesus. Cowley must be apoplectic. If he was still alive.

And the possibility of a world without Cowley brought thoughts of an even worse possibility: a world without Bodie.

What if Bodie hadn't survived this disaster, whatever it was?

Doyle crushed the paper in his hand, even as he was buffeted by waves of shock and fear and possible grief.

Bodie couldn't be dead. He fucking couldn't be. He was too mean to die, too canny to fall to any virus or garden-variety riot. He had to be alive. Doyle wouldn't have it any other way.

Throwing the newspaper aside, and ignoring legs that threatened to buckle underneath him with every step he took, he started running.

* * *

"Guy's Hospital."

Bodie had been catching what sleep he could, what sleep he had time for, in the rest room, when Murphy had burst in and shaken him awake.

"What the fuck, Murph? I haven't slept in days." Bodie tried to shake off the exhaustion that now permanently clung to him.

"I haven't either, Bodie. None of us has. But I thought you'd want to know. Someone's seen Doyle at Guy's."

"What?" Bodie sat up, a spike of adrenaline doing what pure force of will could no longer do to wake him up fully. "Who's seen him? Are they sure it's him?"

"It was Lena. Nurse I dated a while back. They just rotated her to the trauma ward, and she saw Doyle. Said he's been there since the day of the attack."

"Is she sure it's him?" After so many days of wondering, of suspecting Doyle was dead, even as he refused to give up hope, he didn't want to find this was just another blind alley.

"Yeah. She said after that last Christmas party, she's never going to forget the pair of you."

Bodie remembered a night of too much lager, a sprig of mistletoe, and Murphy's latest bird giving him a wink.

"Yeah, I guess she'd remember us." Murphy gave him a look, but didn't ask for an explanation. But if it were Doyle in the hospital… "Why didn't he call? Why didn't the fucker at least let me know he was alive?"

"He couldn't." Murphy collapsed on the sofa beside him and put what he must have thought was a comforting hand on Bodie's arm. "He'd been in a crash. He's in a coma, mate. Has been from the start. Things have been so crazy that no one had time to track down his next of kin."

"Jesus." Bodie shook off Murphy's hand and stood. "I have to go, Murph. I have to go there now."

"You can't mate. There's no leaving the Whitehall safe zone just now, and crossing the river is nearly impossible. The infected are everywhere. When Lena called, she said they're thick around Guy's. The only thing saving the hospital was that the Met were actually on the ball over there and set up good barricades. You'll never get in."

"I don't care. I've got to try, Murph." It didn't make sense. If Doyle were in a coma, there was nothing Bodie could do for him. But he had to see Doyle, just one last time before this fucking impossible fight took them both down.

"Christ," Murphy whispered, looking down at the ground like nothing so much as a man who was about to do something he was going to regret so very much. "Well, you can't go alone, now can you?"

"You don't have—"

"Shut up, Bodie. Just shut up. I'm going to help you, and you know it. Just like I know you're going to try to get to Guy's whether I help you or not."

"Thanks, Murph." Bodie punched him on the shoulder. "You're a brick."

"You can thank me when we're back in one piece." Murphy blew out a big breath and set his shoulders. "Now, why don't we see if the army has a tank going spare."

* * *

The street where CI5 headquarters was found looked much like the rest of London: dead, deserted and desolate, though perhaps with a few less random bits of paper drifting down the road.

Doyle approached the building warily, not knowing quite what to expect. Bodies strewn in the corridors? Offices booby-trapped by agents long since vanished or dead? Cowley himself, still working to make an empty England safe for its missing people?

The reality of the place was more mundane. It was empty, as the hospital had been empty, as the streets had been empty. Dark corridors were home to nothing more than dust motes and echoing memories.

Doyle checked the rest room, Cowley's office. He even broke down and checked Records. He found no one, living or dead, and no indication of where the remaining members of CI5 might have got to.

But if the halls of CI5 held no answers, there were others things to be gained. Doyle headed for the locker room, relieved to find it still held his change of clothes and a spare pair of boots he'd always meant to take home and had never got around to. He shed the scrubs and the too large trainers that had already begun to blister his right foot, and gratefully shrugged into his own clothes.

With the clothes, boots, and a leather jacket he nicked from Anson's locker, he felt slightly less vulnerable than he had. A handful of biscuits from the rest room weren't the freshest things he'd ever eaten, but they filled the hole in his stomach and gave him a bit of raw energy. There was only one more thing he needed before he could leave this place and find Bodie: a weapon.

He didn't feel right, going about unarmed. Never mind there seemed to be no one to aim a gun at, let alone shoot at. But just in case…

He headed downstairs, to the armoury.

The lower levels of CI5 were more unsettling than the upper floors. With no electricity, no lights, and no windows, he could barely see a thing. When he finally managed to find a torch, it almost made things worse, since here were more obvious signs of the disaster that had struck England than the empty streets above.

The weapons cage had always been a tidy place, with neatly stowed weapons and boxes of ammunition all in their proper places. Now it was a right mess. The weapons were mostly gone, and the few remaining on the shelves were strewn about randomly. The ammunition boxes were worse. They'd been kicked to the floor, and tossed to the dark corners of the cage, as if whoever had last gone through this room had done so in a panic.

Doyle suppressed a shudder, and tried not to think about how the torch made this chaos worse, how its weak light made the surrounding darkness seem even blacker, more impenetrable.

But it was stupid, he told himself, being afraid of the dark. He hadn't been bothered by the dark since he was a kid, and even then he hadn't been that fussed by it. He shook off the feeling there was something lurking out there, just beyond the reach of his torch, and got to work.

He poked about until he found gun he could live with, even if it didn't fit his hand as well as his own, a holster that wasn't nearly as nice as the one Bodie had got him last birthday, but would serve, and as many spare boxes of ammunition as he could find. He put the holster on immediately, slipping the gun into it. The ammo he loaded into a duffle he found under the sign-out desk.

He was zipping up the duffle when he thought he heard something.

He stopped, flashing the dimming light of the torch around the cage, but saw only near-empty shelves and the debris of the tools of CI5's trade.

"Hello?" he called out. The only response was the echo of his own voice, bouncing off the concrete walls. "You stupid fucker, Doyle," he muttered to himself as he slung the duffle over his shoulder. "You'll be seeing ghosts next."

He flung open the weapons cage, and the door made the same tortured shriek it always had, a noise he'd never really paid attention to before, but put his nerves on edge now. He began the walk back to the stairs, to the light.

And he heard the sound again. Louder this time. Definitely not the product of his inflamed imagination. A sound like an animal in distress.

"Hello?" he said, louder this time, swinging the torch madly around, trying to pin down where the noise had come from.

The noise grew louder, and he could tell where it was coming from now. He turned the torch behind him, and that's when he saw her.

"Betty?" he said, though he recognized the clothes, the sensible skirt and practical blouse, more than the person. Because Betty didn't move like that, like a rag doll animated by strings, pulling her this way and that. And Betty didn't make that sort of sound, a growling, snarling, snapping sort of sound, the kind of sound a rabid animal might make just before you shot it.

She, or it, cocked her head, and the light of the torch caught her eyes. Her eyes were red. Not just bloodshot red. Blood-soaked red.

"What…"

It was all he had time to say before she leaped at him, her lips peeled back in a horrific snarl, her fingers curved like talons, poised to rip him into shreds.

With his hands burdened by the duffle and the torch, he knew there was no way he'd reach his gun in time. He was going to die. And the worst of it, he realized, was that he would die without ever knowing what had become of Bodie.

She was reaching for him, this thing that used to be Betty, so close that he could feel the heat of her, when he heard the shots. Five shots, in quick succession, four in her body, one in her head, so that as ferocious as she was, she collapsed, her rag doll puppet movements stopped as effectively as if someone had cut her strings.

"Are you hit?" a man's voice was asking him suddenly. Doyle could only gape stupidly at the dead woman on the ground.

"Was that Betty?" In the back of his mind, Doyle was disgusted with himself for sounding like nothing so much as a dazed civilian.

"Probably. I'd wondered what happened to her."

Stuart. The portion of Doyle's brain not occupied with the fact that Cowley's secretary had just attacked him like a, well, a zombie out of one of those dreadful horror films Bodie was always making him watch, offered up the identity of his saviour.

"What _did_ happen to her?"

"Never mind that. Are you hit?"

"No." Doyle shook his head, as much to make sense of all this as to respond to Stuart. "No, I'm not."

"Did she bite you? Did you get her blood in your mouth? In your eyes?"

"What?!" This was fucking insane.

Stuart grabbed his shoulder and shook him hard.

"This isn't a joke, Doyle. Did you get her blood on you?"

"No! I don't know!" He pulled out of Stuart's grasp. "What the hell is going on?"

"She was infected, and the infection is blood borne." Stuart was practically yelling at him now. "Get bitten, get blood in your mouth, and you're gone." Stuart grabbed his arm again and shook him none too gently. "Do you understand?"

"Yeah," Doyle nodded, even though he was having trouble taking it all in. It was too much like one of Bodie's dodgy movies.

"Good." Stuart abruptly let him go. "You can't have got any blood in you. You'd have turned by now. But we'd better get out of here fast. More infected always come when one of them attacks. The longer you're in any spot, the more of a target you are."

Stuart holstered his weapon, and then went back to the weapons' cage and stuffed the pockets of his jacket with as many boxes of ammunition as they'd hold. Doyle hefted his duffle onto his shoulder, and shifted from foot to foot, trying to take it all in.

"Well, come on then," Stuart said when his pockets were filled to overflowing with shells. "Let's get the hell out of here."

* * *

The army did not, in fact, have a tank going spare. But Bodie and Murph did manage to cadge an old jeep that looked like it had been nicked from the Americans for the run to Guy's.

It had helped that 2 Para was in charge of the cordon. One of the sergeants knew Bodie by reputation, and the lieutenant was a friend of Murphy's. A little good will, and the fact that the jeep was just sitting there, not doing anyone a bit of good, and it hadn't been difficult to convince the bloke in charge to loan it to them.

The trip across the river to Guy's was one that was going to be burned into Bodie's memory until the day he died, whether that was tomorrow or fifty years from now. There were the infected, and bodies, and buildings burning. Bodie lost track of how many infected they had to kill.

The worst patch was when they'd tried to help a woman being hunted down by the infected. They hadn't reached her in time, and had to watch as a pack of the infected tore her apart and then turned on them. They'd barely made it out alive. After that they'd killed even more of the infected, as if more blood could expiate the sin of not being fast enough to reach that woman, of not being able to save the thousands, the millions, who'd already been turned or killed.

Once they made it to Guy's the next hardest thing was getting in. The constables guarding the hospital were surviving on adrenaline and too little sleep, and they also weren't keen on letting anyone new, anyone unknown, into the place they'd been charged with protecting.

Bodie had cajoled, and joked, and finally threatened to get past the barrier. A gun in the face turned out to be remarkably helpful in explaining the situation to the young PC they were arguing with.

The inside of the hospital was in stark contrast to the outside world. It was clean, for a start. There were no infected here. But there were plenty of those wounded indirectly by this virus. Plenty of sick and dying.

It was hard to distinguish the staff from the patients. Everyone inside had a grey look to their skin, had a hunted look in their eyes. Bodie suspected a mirror would show him the same expression.

Bodie let Murphy ask the questions, let him lead the way, until they finally made it to the trauma ward, finally found Lena.

"How did you get here?" Lena asked, though she barely showed any curiosity in her haunted, exhausted eyes.

"A bit of luck," Murphy said. "And a lot of ammunition. Is Doyle still here?"

"Is he still alive, you mean." Bodie wondered if she'd been as blunt with patients' families before the virus. "Yeah. Barely. He's this way."

Bodie trailed behind Lena and Murphy as they made their way through the trauma ward. Bodie couldn't help looking into each room as they passed, and in each one he saw a patient surrounded by machines and violated by tubes. As they drew closer to Doyle, he felt any hope he'd had leeching away.

"He's in there," Lena said, stopping before the last room on the corridor.

Bodie couldn't look. Not yet. He focused on Lena. "How did he end up here?"

"He was in a traffic accident the same day the infection started. He's got some assorted bumps and bruises, but the real problem is the head wound. He had a skull fracture and a subdural hematoma. They opened him up, drained the pressure, but…" She trailed off and shrugged before continuing. "Normally, you'd only have five minutes, but no one cares about the rules anymore. Take whatever time you need."

There was no avoiding it. Bodie took a deep breath and opened the door to Doyle's room.

At first Doyle looked no worse than after he'd been shot. He was surrounded by machines that breathed for him, tubes that pumped liquids into him and tubes that pulled liquids out of him. But then Bodie moved further into the room and saw the full extent of the damage.

"Christ, Sunshine. What have they done to your hair?"

The left side of Doyle's head had been shaved to reveal a jagged, red incision, the stitches holding it together still visible. The stubbled skin on the left side made his curls look more riotous than ever. Add in the spectacular bruising, and he looked fucking awful.

Bodie had seen a lot of fucking awful things in his life, in Africa, in Northern Ireland, in London. He'd seen even more in the last week. But it seemed he'd reached his limit on what he could handle. His legs buckled under him, and the only reason he didn't fall on his face was that Murphy, good old Murphy, caught him by one arm and steered him into the one chair in the room, right at Doyle's side.

"Are you all right, Bodie?"

"'Course I'm not all right." He couldn't look at Murphy, couldn't look at Doyle. Which left him the not-very-interesting–to-look-at floor. "What sort of a stupid question is that?"

"Is there anything I can do?"

"Just fuck off like a good lad, would you?"

Murphy had the good sense not to argue with him. Bodie heard his footsteps and the door opening and closing, and then he was alone with Doyle.

Only then did he manage the courage it took to look at Doyle again.

But for the rise and fall of his chest as the machines breathed for him, he looked dead. His skin was waxy, and his face showed not a flicker of movement. It wasn't like after Mayli had shot him at all. That time, Bodie had been able tell Doyle was in there, struggling with his conscience, deciding whether to live or die. This time it looked like he'd given up, like he couldn't be bothered to fight anymore. Like he'd already left the building.

He took Doyle's hand in his, its warmth telling Bodie there was some life left in his partner.

"I'm here, Ray. I would have been here sooner, but I didn't know where you were."

Bodie closed his eyes, tried to bring up images of Doyle in better times: Doyle laughing at his own filthy jokes; Doyle tipping back his head to drink a pint, his throat exposed; Doyle looking down at him, a wicked smile on his face and not a stitch of clothing on his body. But he couldn't keep it up. The images kept twisting into a horror show. Finding Doyle shot. The raid gone wrong in Essex. That woman screaming as the infected tore into her. He finally opened his eyes when the inside of his head got too much to handle.

He squeezed Doyle's hand tightly, too tightly, hoping the pain might provoke a reaction, but Doyle's face remained impassive.

"You've got to pull out of this, Ray. You've got to get better. 'Cause I don't think I'm going to last long without you."

He leaned forward then, and kissed Doyle's forehead, not giving a flying fuck if Murphy or Lena or anyone else saw him. It was too late for camouflaging his feelings, too late to hide how much he cared for Doyle.

Murphy and Lena were in the corridor, waiting for him. Murphy raised an eyebrow, and Bodie could only shake his head in response.

"You look after him," he said to Lena. "You'll do that for me, won't you?"

"It might-" she began, then cut herself off abruptly.

"What?" Bodie said, his voice sharp as the wind of a North Atlantic storm as his eyes dared her to continue, fearing, knowing what she was going to say.

"It might be better," she said slowly, "if he never woke up."

Bodie didn't say anything, didn't trust himself to say anything. He simply stared at her, desperately trying not to give in to the temptation to strike her.

"He's not getting any better," Lena continued, clearly not aware the danger she was in. "The consultant has given up on him. And even if he does wake up, the way things are, he's not likely to last long."

Something inside Bodie, the thing that kept him civilized, the thing that kept him from acting on the savage impulses that sometimes overwhelmed him, snapped. Without forming a conscious thought to move, he had Lena pinned against the wall, his forearm tight against her windpipe as he felt Murphy try to shift him off her.

"Listen to me. Doyle wouldn't give up, and I'm not giving up on him." He put just a fraction more pressure on her delicate throat. "I need you not to give up on him." He fixed her with as fierce a stare as he could manage. "Do you understand?"

When she nodded, her eyes wide with fear, Bodie released her. She recoiled from him immediately, rubbing at her throat, as Murphy caught him roughly by the arm.

"She's only trying to help."

"I don't need that kind of help." Bodie shook off Murphy's grip. "Neither does Doyle."

"I'm sorry," Lena said, her voice was barely loud enough for him to hear, but her eyes showed more spark than they'd done since they'd found her. "I know what he means to you."

"Do you?"

"I do." Lena held his gaze with her own, and Bodie recalled exactly when it was he'd met her. Sally had drawn the short straw, and was hosting the CI5 Christmas party. Everyone had been drunk, and he and Doyle had let their guard down slightly more than they should have done. Lena had been searching for her coat in Sally's bedroom, and had come upon the two of them just as Doyle had pushed him against the wall and snogged him rotten. They'd frozen when Lena had entered the room, all three of them. Then Lena had smiled slyly, and given them a wink, and Bodie had known it was all right. She wouldn't give them away.

If anyone knew what Doyle meant to him, it was Lena.

He felt a sudden shame rise up in him that he'd attacked this woman, simply for telling her version of the truth. Because he could understand why she'd said what she had. Could even see the sense in it, though he was selfish enough never to consider what she had suggested.

"Can you forgive me?" he finally asked.

"We're none of us at our best," Lena said with a shrug.

Bodie had no response for that, so he simply turned and started down the corridor. He heard Murphy murmuring something to Lena, then his friend was beside him.

They were nearly off the ward when Lena yelled "Bodie!" down the hall. He turned, and Lena ran down the hall.

"Give me a number where I can reach you. I'll let you know if he wakes up."

"It'll never work. The phones are going to fail soon. The power's nearly gone as it is."

"Give me the fucking number."

In the end, he gave her three numbers: the CI5 general line, Betty's, and the secret number for Cowley only agents were given. Cowley could give him a bollocking if Lena used it, but at least it gave him that much more of a chance of getting news of Doyle.

"Thank you," Bodie said.

"C'mon," Murphy urged. It'll be dark in an hour. We need to get back to the Whitehall zone before then."

The trip back to headquarters was even more hellish than the journey out had been, but for the first time since Essex, Bodie had a tiny shard of optimism caught in his heart.

Ray was alive. There was someone who knew him looking after him. And if everything else in this fucking world was trapped in fucking darkness, then at least he had that slim ray of hope to light his way.

* * *

Doyle had to hand it to Stuart: he'd aimed high when choosing a bolthole. Stuart led him away from CI5 headquarters at a trot Doyle could only barely keep up with, zigging and zagging through streets Doyle knew, but seemed alien in their desolation, until they fetched up in front of Westminster Abbey.

"You're never staying here," Doyle said with something like awe. This was a choice worthy of Bodie.

Stuart only gave him a smile, and led him through the great doors. They made their way down the nave, through the cloisters, and into a windowless room Doyle hadn't even been aware existed in this place.

There were no tombs or crypts in the room, which Doyle could only feel grateful for, and apart from the ancient tile on the floor, there was nothing to show how old it was. Supplies were stacked in every corner. There were cases of food, and bottles of water and lucozade, and even a nearly empty wooden box with a few wizened apples rattling around in the bottom.

And there were weapons.

Pistols, shotguns, machine guns, Stuart had them all, and the ammunition to go with them. Doyle imagined he'd got some of them from CI5, but others would have had to have been nicked from army supplies. Either way, they wouldn't suffer from a lack of fire power.

As Doyle surveyed Stuart's small kingdom, Stuart wrestled a high wooden screen into place at the door of the room. It wouldn't keep out a concerted attack, but it hid them from view, and would slow down the sort of unthinking monster they appeared to be fighting in this war.

Stuart waved him over to the only chair, a rather magnificent carved wooden affair, and then proceeded to open a tin of stew and place it in Doyle's hand. It didn't matter that it was cold, or that he would have complained about the taste mere weeks ago. Here and now, it was the best meal he'd ever had. He devoured it all, then wiped down this inside of the tin with his fingers and licked them off. When he'd finished it, Stuart threw him a tin of peaches and the Swiss Army knife he'd used on the other tin. Doyle ate the peaches slightly more slowly, but only slightly.

His body fed, Doyle began to worry more about other things. One other thing in particular.

"What happened to Bodie?"

Sitting on a crate of ammunition, Stuart only shook his head.

"What happened to him?" Doyle pushed further, torn between wanting to know where Bodie was and wanting to live in blissful ignorance for a little while longer.

"I don't know, Doyle. I really don't know. He wasn't around when everything went pear-shaped. I don't know who made it and who didn't. I don't know if Bodie made it out of the country, or to Scotland. I don't know anything."

"He's still alive." Doyle spoke mostly to himself. "He has to be alive."

"Well, if anyone survived what happened, I'd put money on it being that stubborn bastard. I don't know how you managed him."

"I told you once before. Bodie's all right."

"Bodie may be all right, but you're not. You look like death warmed over, Doyle." Stuart threw him a blanket and nodded at the camp bed hidden at the back. "You should get some sleep. We'll talk more in the morning."

Doyle didn't want to wait until morning. He wanted to know everything now. But even as he was about to voice those thoughts, he was stopped by a jaw-cracking yawn.

He wrapped himself in the blanket and collapsed onto the camp bed, the physical effort of the last few hours finally taking their toll. In moments, sleep had nearly claimed him.

But old habits die hard, and he was too much the good agent to forget proper protocol.

"Should one of us keep watch?" he asked, poking his head up.

"One of us is going to," Stuart replied. He was sitting cross-legged to one side of the wrought iron gate, a shotgun balanced across his legs. "But it's not going to be you. Now go to sleep, you stupid man."

Doyle was too tired to object to the insult, and he was asleep before he'd quite pulled the blanket back around him.

* * *

Through the long days and longer nights that followed, Bodie clung for comfort to one lone fact: Doyle was alive. In a coma and banged up, but alive.

There wasn't much else to cling to.

Cowley had very quickly seen the danger of the infected, and had been instrumental in setting up safe zones around the city. The army, the Met, anyone who could use a weapon or learn to, had been drafted to protect those zones, and the people in them. But every day the infected grew in number. And every day, they seemed to lose another safe zone.

It had been Greenwich last night. Bodie had been in the Communications room, talking to Benny, when the call had come in from the command post at the Maritime museum. The bloke on the other end of the call had been panicked, had begged for reinforcements. There wasn't much they could do for him, though. There was no way they could have got extra men to his location in time, assuming they had any to spare. Which they hadn't. All they could do was stay on the radio with him as he waited for the end to come, and listen to his screams when it did.

Cowley had arrived midway through the call, listening to everything with a clenched jaw and a cold look in his eye. When it was all over, he'd gone back to his office and stayed there for the better part of a day.

In between manning the safe zone cordon and going on patrols, looking for a decreasing numbers of civilians who needed rescuing, Bodie had gone to check periodically on the Old Man. He hadn't liked the look of him when he'd left Communications, but Betty wouldn't let him through. She did tell him Cowley had been on the phones nearly non-stop, talking to what was left of the government and Her Majesty's forces.

When Cowley emerged from his refuge, it was with a plan.

Evacuation.

Deals had been struck with their European allies to evacuate every healthy person in England who could make it to a departure point. Ports, airports, they were all to be used.

It was a mad scheme. It was hard enough to get a well-armed team out of the safe zone. It was going to be nearly impossible to get hundreds of civilians through London to Heathrow or Gatwick or Dover, and onto the planes and ferries that would take them to safety. But that was exactly what Cowley was planning.

"We have teams working on reinforcing buses to carry the civilians," Cowley told what remained of his squad. They were gathered in the briefing room, as if it were any other op. "The army will supply escort in their tanks."

"And how the fuck are we supposed to get planes off the ground?" A month ago, no one would have had the nerve to be so bolshy, not to mention profane, with the Cow. Now, no one batted an eye when Murphy said what they all were thinking.

"We won't have to." Bodie had to hand it to Cowley, he was as cool as ice when he needed to be. "The French and the Yanks are supplying the planes. Their satellites show the runways of most airports to be clear and in good shape. They'll be landing and taking off quickly."

"They'll need to," Bodie said under his breath, earning him a nudge in the ribs from Philips, and a glare from Cowley himself.

"Yes, they will need to, Bodie. And with our help, they will."

"What's our job, then? Sir." Bodie couldn't help himself, he responded to Cowley like he always did, and always would, like the good soldier, ready and eager to do his job.

"Our job, Bodie, is to make sure that the planes have enough time to make their landings, load their passengers, and take off. We'll be holding Heathrow against the infected. Other groups will be assigned to various airports and ports."

There was a whistle from the back, and Bodie heard someone, a new bloke he hadn't got to know before and sure as fuck wasn't going to bother getting to know now, whisper, "And who's going to make sure we get on a plane?"

Cowley looked right at and through the little bastard. "We can depend on no one but ourselves, Mr. Bannon. _We_ will make sure we get on a plane, and _we_ will make sure that plane takes off. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir." At least the berk had the sense to look embarrassed.

"But I am putting a contingency plan in place, just in case. If our defences fall, we will rendezvous at Watford. We will then convoy north, to Scotland. There are several defensible locations I know of that might serve as a stronghold against the infected. And if anyone doesn't make the rendezvous, Betty will be supplying you with a radio frequency to check. I'll be broadcasting our location as soon as we're established."

Cowley paused, and looked at each one of them, his expression determined.

"Now, I don't need to tell you all what's at stake. We lost Greenwich last night. We lost Croydon and Earl's Court the night before. If we don't try something, we're going to be worn down and worn down until the infected finally win. And I, for one, ladies and gentlemen, refuse to let that happen. If we can't save England, we can at least save her people."

It was as rousing a speech as Bodie had heard Cowley make, a speech worthy of a true leader. And looking around the room, Bodie could see it had done the trick. A room full of despairing, desperate men and women had been energized into a room full of warriors, determined to do their duty and save what they could of their country.

"Betty has your assignments. I hope you've all slept recently, because there'll be no chance for rest from now until tomorrow, not until the last plane has left the runway."

"Yes sir!" said Bodie, and all the others in the room, and then scrambled to get his assignment.

It was only then, as he stood outside the briefing room holding the slip of paper outlining what he'd be doing for the next twenty-four hours, that he remembered Ray.

* * *

Doyle woke up with a start, surrounded by boxes, unsure of where he was or how he'd got there.

He held still for a moment, breathing rapidly, hoping it would all come back to him.

And then it did.

And he wished it hadn't.

He sat up, too quickly, and nearly threw up as a throbbing pain threatened to undo him totally.

"Fuckin' hell." He clutched his head and tried to blink away the tears filling his eyes.

"Aren't you a ray of sunshine in the morning." Stuart appeared from around a corner of boxes.

"Fuck off, Stuart," Doyle said without any real venom, all his energy devoted to not throwing up, and not taking a knife and cutting off his own head.

"And I thought Bodie was the unpleasant one." Stuart threw something at the end of the camp bed. Doyle looked up enough to see a box of cereal. "There's no milk for the cereal, I'm afraid, but you can wash it down with this." A bottle of orange juice was placed in Doyle's hand.

The thought of orange juice and dry cereal nearly did in Doyle completely, but he did manage to keep the meagre contents of his stomach down. The throbbing finally subsided enough that he could contemplate opening the juice, if not the cereal.

He downed the juice as Stuart watched him from a perch on an ammunitions box. After a second bottle of juice, a handful of dried cereal, and a couple of paracetamol, he felt almost human enough to ask a few questions.

"Now do you want to tell me what happened?"

"I told you last night."

"You didn't tell me much."

"You didn't look like you could handle much."

"I can this morning."

"Can you?"

Doyle had hit men for less, for insinuating he wasn't tough enough, wasn't strong enough to handle hard tasks or hard truths. He held himself back from hitting Stuart. After all, the man had saved his life yesterday. And he looked to be his only ally in this nightmarish new version of London.

"Yes, I bloody well can," Doyle said through gritted teeth.

Stuart stared at him for a long moment, before he finally spoke. "What do you want to know?"

"Everything," Doyle said. "I want to know everything."

* * *

Bodie knew he was being selfish. He knew the survival of one CI5 agent shouldn't count more than the population of uninfected citizens of London. Knew he should just shut up and do his duty.

He knew all this, and he didn't care about any of it. Because as long as Ray Doyle was alive, Bodie was going to make damn sure he stayed that way, no matter the obstacles in his path.

Right now, the main obstacle in his path was George Cowley.

He ignored the other agents milling about the hall, clutching their orders, and engaging in the sort of pre-op banter Bodie had participated in a thousand times. He went directly to Cowley's office and into the antechamber where Betty, looking as ragged as any of them, stood guard over the old man's office.

Bodie ignore her and strode over to the inner door.

"Mr. Cowley is busy," Betty said, her voice steely. "He's not seeing anyone."

"He's seeing me, love," Bodie said without looking back. He didn't even bother knocking, just opened the door and strode in, to find Cowley sitting at his desk, his head in his hands, looking as vulnerable as Bodie had ever seen him. More vulnerable than when Barry Martin had put him in the hospital, more gutted than when Annie Irvine had broken his heart for the second time.

Bodie halted in his tracks, his momentum brought up short. Before he could decide how he should break the silence, there was a bustling behind him and Betty was there.

"I'm sorry, sir. I couldn't stop him."

"That's all right, Betty. I'll see 3.7." Cowley's voice sounded hollow, the voice of a man shouldering too many responsibilities on too little sleep. Bodie regretted more than anything that he was about to give Cowley one more responsibility, but he didn't allow even that to sway him from his purpose.

It was only when the door had closed, shutting Betty out and the two of them in, that Cowley raised his head.

"Yes, Bodie?"

"I have to go to Guy's," Bodie blurted out before his resolve left him.

"I assume this is about 4.5?"

"I want to get him. Bring him back here for evacuation."

"I don't suppose you've considered that he's in the place where he's safest?"

"Not with the evacuation going on, he isn't."

"Think, man. We've considered the hospitals. All hospitals that remain secure, and that includes Guy's, will be evacuated."

"I need to make sure he's safe."

"You may be able to keep him safe from the infected, but can you keep him alive? Do you know what treatment he's receiving? Can you keep him breathing until you get to Heathrow?" Cowley had adopted the tone of a schoolteacher who assumed his student was too thick to learn, and that stung. Bodie had encountered that attitude too many times on his journey through Liverpool's schools. It didn't sit well with him now, hearing it from a man he respected.

"If he's not safe from the infected, he's dead."

"You are _not_ going, Bodie."

"I am."

"Consider my position." Cowley fixed Bodie with a pointed stare. "There isn't a man or woman in this organization who hasn't got a loved one somewhere out there. Some are in safe zones. Some haven't been heard from for days. One or two are barricaded in their homes. If I let you go to Guy's, then what's to stop Murphy from retrieving his mother from the Wimbledon safe zone? Or Sally from trying to find her sister's children? I'd be left with no one, and no way of saving the hundreds of civilians who are depending on us in the Whitehall safe zone, who will be depending on CI5 to keep Heathrow secure while they're evacuated."

"But--"

"But nothing. If you attempt to leave this building for any reason other than performing your assigned duties, I'll shoot you myself."

Bodie had always wondered if Cowley would have done it. If he'd have shot him for killing King Billy. He had no such doubts now. He knew, utterly and absolutely, Cowley would put a bullet in his back if he abandoned his post. And he understood, which didn't make him hate Cowley any less.

"Is that clear, Bodie?" Cowley's voice broke through the seething of his thoughts.

"Yes, sir." If he didn't quite salute, Bodie did snap to a military posture, his signal to his superior officer that he would obey, even if he didn't agree with his orders.

Cowley examined him closely, as if he could detect a lie from the cant of his head or the line of his mouth. Finally, he gave Bodie a curt nod.

"Very well. Dismissed."

Bodie didn't say another word, simply turned on his heel and left. He passed Betty, passed the other agents, strode down the stairs, ran down the stairs, and finally burst out of the front doors, and stood, panting on the front steps of CI5.

He paused there, taking in the scene in front of him, the soldiers in combat gear passing by the building, the reels of barb wire at the end of the street, the smashed in windows in the building across the street, the one that had been overrun before the safe zone had been completely sealed.

Cowley was right. He couldn't hold Ray's life above all others. He would do his duty.

And yet, if what he feared happened, if Ray was killed, or worse, was turned, he knew he would hate himself even more than he hated George Cowley at this very moment.

* * *

Stuart settled into a chair opposite the camp bed Doyle occupied. He folded his hands in his lap and stared at Doyle, looking for all the world like George Cowley sussing out whether an agent was up to the job.

Well, two could play at that game. Doyle sat up straighter and looked Stuart over. He was thinner that Doyle remembered, for a start, and he'd always been on the lean side. He seemed to have developed a nervous tic in his right hand, kept drumming his fingers on his leg. And his expression, always somewhat serious, had become outright dour.

"You said you wanted to know everything," Stuart finally said. "Well, here it is."

He told Doyle about the start of the outbreak, and how quickly it spread. How every part of Britain was soon affected. How the dead and infected were everywhere. And how CI5 and George Cowley worked to stem the tide of the virus.

"Things would have been ten times worse without the old man. He got the safe zones running. He came up with the evacuation plan.

"And it worked? You got the people out?"

"We got some people out. More than we might have, but not everyone. Not by a long chalk. And it all went to shit at the end."

"How?"

"We didn't have enough buses to take everyone in the safe zone in one trip. So we had to make multiple trips. And it worked for a while. The army blokes made three or four trips, got people to the airport, saw them onto the planes while we held the infected off the runways. Not an easy job, but the flamethrowers helped."

"Then what happened?"

"It was like the infected worked out what we were doing. Worked out how to attack. They massed and surged. Took out the blokes with the flamethrowers first, then came after the rest of us. They got into the buses and from that that point forward it was like my old parish priest's vision of hell. There were bodies and more infected, and more blood than I've ever seen.

"We got one last plane off safely. Cowley managed to notify the rest of the planes not to land, and then we ran. Most of us made it to the vehicles. Those who couldn't make it were killed. Or turned."

"Where did you go?"

"I just drove. Susan and Gregson were in the car with me, and we made it back to Whitehall. I don't know where the others went. Cowley had some mad scheme about setting up a stronghold in Scotland. He even set up a rendezvous point at Watford."

"You didn't try for the rendezvous point?"

Stuart shook his head. "It was nearly impossible to move through the city, let alone get out of it. The three of us decided to wait it out here."

Doyle looked around Stuart's refuge, tried to find some sign of Susan and Gregson's existence and found none. "What happened to them? Susan and Gregson?"

Stuart stared at him for a long time with eyes that had seen far too much. When he finally spoke, his voice had changed, become huskier than usual, and his fingers beat an even faster tattoo on his leg. "Susan didn't last long. Maybe three days. One of the infected bit her when we went outside for supplies. I had to kill her myself. She was still herself when I pulled the trigger, but you have to act fast. Thirty seconds or less after someone is bitten, they turn."

Stuart swallowed hard before continuing.

"Gregson lasted the longest. Until…" Stuart's voice faltered and he blinked several times before continuing. "Until three days ago. Did you know Gregson?"

"No. He was another undercover specialist, wasn't he?"

"Yeah. We worked together a few times. He was good at sussing out the Irish. Not so good with the infected, though. He got cornered in a blind alley. I couldn't help. There were too many of them, and they'd already bitten him. I had to run or they'd have got me next. I could hear him screaming for a long time. Too long."

"I'm sorry," Doyle said. The words were inadequate, but they were the only comfort Doyle could offer.

"Not your fault."

They were both quiet for a time, the silence and the darkness seeping into Doyle's bones.

"Do you know if Cowley made it to Scotland?"

Stuart shrugged. "There was a radio frequency to check, in case you didn't make the rendezvous point. I've listened to that frequency every day and there's never anyone on the air. Just static."

Doyle clenched a fist and tried to summon his courage, tried to find the bottle to ask the one question he should.

"And Bodie? Was he with Cowley?"

"No. The stupid bastard wasn't even with us at the airport."

"What?"

"Yeah." Stuart's mouth twisted into an ugly shape that could have been a grin or a grimace. "He went after you."

* * *

Bodie zipped up his jacket and checked his supply of ammunition one more time.

He was more grateful than ever that he'd had the foresight to go back to his flat and grab his riding leathers when things had merely been serious and not fucking catastrophic. He was hoping they'd save his life now. They were flexible enough that he could move well in them, but tough enough to resist a bite from one of the infected.

"You trying out for the Hell's Angels, Bodie?" Jax asked.

"Fuck off," Bodie said, and moved a bit further away from the crush of agents in the room.

He didn't want to engage in the usual pre-op banter. Wasn't interested in the typical agent backchat. Because all that did was remind him of the man who was missing from his side. It reminded him Doyle was across the river in a fucking hospital bed and he couldn't do a thing about it

He saw Murphy glance his way, and then give Jax a concerned look, but that just made him angrier. He didn't want their concern, didn't want their pity. He just wanted this day over and done with. He wanted to be on a plane off this fucking island, hopefully at Doyle's side.

He pushed his way past Benny and burst from the locker room to emerge, staring and wild-eyed, needing to run even though there was nowhere to run to. Slumping against the wall, he stared at the ceiling and threw a prayer up to a god he didn't really believe was listening to keep Doyle safe.

That was where Betty found him.

"Bodie, there's a call for you on my line. It sounded urgent."

"I didn't think the phones were working," Bodie said as he pushed himself off the wall.

"Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't We can't depend on them, that's certain."

"Who is it?"

"She didn't say."

"She?" A wash of panic sloughed off the fog of exhaustion and self-pity Bodie had been existing in for nearly twenty-four hours. He was running down the hall before Betty could say another word.

At first he thought Betty had got it wrong, that it wasn't a call, just static on the line. "Hello?" he tried, not expecting anything. But a voice answered him. A panicked female voice that he immediately recognized.

"Bodie? Thank God I've got hold of you. You have to get here now."

"Lena? What's going on?"

"We're supposed to be evacuating, but the infected are massing and they think the barriers around the hospital are going to fall. We're not going to have nearly enough time to get all the patients out." Lena was talking so fast, all her sentences seemed to be merging together in one grand poly-syllabic word. "You have to get here now, Bodie."

"I can't, love." Bodie hated this, but he'd promised Cowley, had sworn to do his duty. He wouldn't back down on that.

"You _have_ to." Those three words weren't delivered at the breakneck pace of her previous outburst, but very slowly indeed.

"Why?."

"They've triaged the patients. They're only evacuating those with the greatest chance of survival. The walking wounded. Those who'll require the least amount of care."

Lena paused, as if she was hoping Bodie would pick up on her meaning without her stating it directly. But Bodie wasn't feeling that charitable. He needed her to say the words.

"What do you mean?"

"Ray didn't make the list. He won't be evacuated. They were even going to, well, make sure he didn't suffer, but I wouldn't let them. I didn't let them, Bodie."

"Jesus," Bodie said softly. He could feel his breath coming in sharp gasps, could feel the blood pounding through his veins, could feel the panic he'd thought he was immune to overwhelming every nerve in his body.

"Did you hear me, Bodie? You have to get here. You have to get here now."

"I will, Lena."

"I've locked him in his room." She continued on as if she hadn't heard him, and given the turmoil he could hear over the line, she might not have. "I slid the key under the door. I didn't want the infected to get him."

"I'm coming, Lena," he shouted into the receiver, unconcerned now whether Cowley himself heard his declaration of treason.

"You have to come, Bodie." She broke off, and Bodie could hear someone else talking in the distance. "Oh God." There was another pause. "Come soon, Bodie. Come-", and the line went dead.

Bodie felt as if all the blood had been drained from his body. He nearly dropped to his knees in despair, but kept on his feet out of sheer bloody-mindedness. This wasn't going to happen. It wasn't fucking well going to happen. Doyle was not going to die at the hands of the infected. He just wasn't.

Bodie returned to the locker room, deliberately ignoring the stares of the other agents, slung his holster over one shoulder, picked up his shotgun, and left the room as quickly as he'd entered it.

He was hoping he'd make a clean getaway, but he heard footsteps behind him.

"Where are you going, Bodie?"

"It's none of your business, Murph." Bodie made his voice as cold as he could manage.

"I'm afraid it is." Murphy ran to catch him up and grabbed his arm to stop him. Bodie spun around, his back tense, ready to attack if necessary. "Cowley told me to keep an eye on you. Told me to stop you if you tried to leave."

"They've just about lost Guy's," Bodie said, not even trying to make a rational argument. "Lena just called, and the infected are nearly through the barricades. So they've made the decision that they're not evacuating everyone." He paused and looked Murphy directly in the eye. "They're not taking _Doyle_."

Murphy stared back at him for what must have been a minute. Bodie wondered what he was thinking. Whether he was wondering why Bodie should be allowed to save Doyle when he couldn't save his mother. Whether he was trying to decide if he had it in him to shoot a fellow agent.

"Let me go, Murph." He wasn't above begging. "Please."

Murphy swallowed, then let go of Bodie's arm.

"Go," he said. "Just get the fuck out of here."

Bodie didn't wait for him to change his mind. He strode down the corridor as quickly as he could manage without drawing attention to himself, and left Murphy standing there.

"Bodie," Murphy called behind him. "Find Lena, if you can. Save her too."

Bodie stopped for a moment, nodded, and then ran down the stairs, leaving CI5 behind him.

He grabbed a Capri from the motor pool when no one was looking, and got out of the cordon by talking shite to the sentries about Cowley wanting a final recce of the area surrounding the safe zone.

The drive from Whitehall to Guy's was better than it should have been. There were no infected about, no attacks to avoid. Nothing. It was as if the city had already been evacuated of everyone, healthy and infected.

When he drew closer to Guy's, he saw where all the infected had gone.

The barrier surrounding hospital was encircled by the infected, twenty deep. He could see where the barrier had been breached in several spots, but so far the Met blokes seemed to be keeping the infected in check.

Bodie knew he had to act fast. There was no time for subtlety, no time for a meticulous plan. It was brute force or nothing. Fortunately, he'd always had a talent for brute force.

He picked his route, picked his targets, then floored the Capri.

As he hit the outer edges of the infected, he could hear the bodies go down, could hear the crush of bones as he drove over them. He ignored the sounds, ignored their screams, their howls. He just drove until he hit the barrier. He grabbed his shotgun and was out of the Capri before he could consider how fucking insane he was. On the bonnet, up the fence, and over the top before one of those fucking bastards had even laid a finger on him.

Of course, he hadn't reckoned on how the Met would react. One of them nearly put a bullet in his head until they realized he wasn't infected. Even then, it took them a minute before they let him pass.

Getting inside the hospital was almost as difficult as getting past the barrier. There were buses, and patients, and more members of the Met, and a palpable sense of panic everywhere. Bodie tried not to think about how he was getting out of here, what with his vehicle now surrounded by the infected, and hundreds of others waiting to get on the pitifully few buses they seemed to have laid on.

He pushed his way past two patients--one holding tightly to the cane keeping him barely upright, the other trying to keep her IV line from getting tangled—and entered the hospital.

Inside the hospital, chaos truly reigned.

There were patients and nurses and doctors in a crush it was almost impossible to get through. No one seemed to be in charge, and everyone was terrified. The stink of their terror clung to them in a way Bodie hadn't sensed since Africa. Not since he'd seen a truck full of refugees caught between his troop and a group of rebel fighters. That had been nearly the last straw, the thing that had finally driven him out of Africa, and home.

Now home was significantly worse than that African road.

Bodie slung the shotgun on his back and pushed further into the crowd, further into the hospital. He kept reminding himself that each footstep took him closer to Doyle, but his progress was pitifully slow. The crush of people was overwhelming, and they were all moving out, pushing Bodie back in the direction he'd come from.

He increased his efforts, pushing harder, not caring who was in his way. He was beginning to move forward, to get closer to the stairwell that would take him to the trauma ward, to Doyle, when the mood of the crowd changed.

They stopped. Moving, talking, crying. Everything. It was as if everyone in the hospital was straining to hear the same faint sound.

Bodie felt a prickle down his back, a prickle he'd felt before, in the heat of the African sun, in the rain of Belfast, in the backstreets of London. It was a sensation that had saved his life more than once.

He was unslinging the shotgun from his back when the silence broke and the screaming started.

He could see a frenzied movement near the doors, people trying to run where there was no place for them to go. There was a churning of the crowd, like the churning of the ocean near a ship's prop. And then Bodie saw a spray of blood arc into the air.

That was when the screaming began in earnest, and Bodie saw the first of the infected inside the hospital.

"Fucking hell." He pushed forward harder, his movement hampered by the people trying to escape from the infected he was trying to reach. If he could get there fast enough, get there before too many of them had turned…

But he was already seeing signs of people turning. The thrashing movements, the inhuman sounds.

He aimed at one man with telltale bloodshot eyes, but a woman ran in front of him before he could pull the trigger. Then she was down, was turning. He pulled the goggles he usually used on his bike from his pocket and fitted them in place, slim protection against the blood of the infected, but protection all the same. Then he swung at the newly infected woman with the butt of his shotgun, ignoring the blood that sprayed up with each blow, and hoping none got in his mouth.

He worked through the crowd, bludgeoning the infected as he went, but there was always one more infected to kill. His arms were growing heavy from the effort, and his goggles were steaming up, making it hard to see.

He saw some members of the Met in riot gear enter, and hoped they'd be enough, that between them, they would get things under control. But then he was surrounded by a group of the infected, and he knew this was it, his last stand.

"This is for Ray, you bastards," he snarled as he struck one of the infected in the head. Then there was a blow, and pain, and he was falling into darkness, falling into the pit, and he knew there was no winning this time.

* * *

  
Doyle was forced to learn a whole new set of rules for survival.

"We travel by day, not night. The infected don't seem to like the daylight much."

"Why?"

"I don't know, do I, Doyle? I'm not a fucking scientist." Stuart was always short tempered. He never seemed thankful for the presence of another human being, seemed to view Doyle as just another weight to slow him down. Which Doyle might have resented more, except that he knew he wasn't at his best.

The one look he'd taken of himself in a mirror was enough to tell him that. The scar on his scalp was still prominent, and the shaved patch looked ridiculous. He'd found a set of barber's clippers the next day and had Stuart shave the rest of his hair down to match.

"Don't get bitten. Don't get infected blood in your eyes, or in your mouth."

"How much blood? How big a bite?"

"It doesn't take much, and it doesn't take long. Thirty seconds, and you're one of them."

"Christ."

He had to learn new habits, had to become even harder than he was. And he hadn't been soft to begin with.

"If I start to turn, you kill me immediately, Doyle. You don't fucking wait. I won't if you're bitten."

"Why don't you kill me now?" Doyle asked, overwhelmed by a bitter helplessness. "Save yourself the trouble later."

"Don't think it hasn't crossed my mind."

"Jesus, Stuart."

Their days were spent foraging and avoiding the infected. They visited every Tesco, every Sainsbury's, in walking distance, scavenging what they could find. Tinned beans, tinned, stews, tinned spaghetti hoops. If Doyle never saw a tin again in his life, he would be eternally thankful.

They cached their bounty of tins at different locations in the city.

"They might find us here," Stuart told him one night in their Westminster vault. "We might have to move."

They saw no one else who wasn't infected. Not one person who didn't have blood red eyes and an appetite for human flesh. Doyle killed his first infected the second day after he woke, a wild-eyed creature in the remnants of a business suit who attacked them in a Marks and Sparks food hall. There were more after that, but he tried not to think about them.

"There must be others," Doyle insisted one day as they loaded up bottles of Lucozade from a chemist's shop off Piccadilly. "Other people. Healthy people. We can't be the only ones left."

"I haven't seen anyone," Stuart said without looking at Doyle. "Not since Gregson. And no one but him for days before that." He tossed the last of the bottles into the shopping trolley they'd liberated for their supply raids. "Face it, Doyle. Everyone in London is either infected or dead. We're the last uninfected people in the city."

"God help us both," Doyle said, with not a trace of humour. Because if he had to be stuck in a deserted London with only one other person for company, Stuart was pretty fucking far down his list of preferred companions. Which only made him think more about the one person he'd rather be with.

Bodie.

Not that Stuart wanted to talk about Bodie, or anyone else in CI5.

"Why don't we leave? Get out of London? See if we can find the others?"

"There aren't any others, Doyle. They must all be dead."

"Not Bodie. Bodie can't be dead." Doyle knew he sounded delusional, but he wouldn't be convinced Bodie wasn't out there, somewhere, alive and healthy.

"I've already told you, before Heathrow was overrun, a few buses came through from Guy's. They'd seen the barricades fall at the hospital. They said no one could have survived."

" _I_ survived."

"You were locked in your room. I don't see Bodie hiding in a locked room. Do you?"

"No," Doyle agreed reluctantly. "No, I don't." Bodie wouldn't hide. Wouldn't play it safe. Bodie would fight until the end, and would take as many of the bastards with him as he possibly could.

Stuart wanted to stay in London.

"There's plenty of food, plenty of places to hide. And the infected can't live forever. We're their food. If there's no one left to eat, they're going to start starving. Staying here is our best chance for survival."

"I don't want to survive. I want to live."

Every night, when he was on watch by himself, when Stuart had succumbed to the unquiet sleep that seemed the only sort of rest either of them could manage, Doyle would listen to the radio.

It was a short wave set Stuart had scavenged from CI5 headquarters. They'd found enough batteries in the camera stores on the Strand to keep it playing for months, if not years.

At first, Doyle only listened to the frequency that Cowley had given in his final briefing. He listened to static on that frequency for so long, he nearly went mad with it. He started hearing human voices in the inhuman buzz, started hearing it in his sleep.

So he started scanning the dial. The static was the same, but at least turning the dial gave him something to think about. Kept him from thinking he heard Bodie's voice in the static.

It was all more static, punctuated by the occasional faint voice in French, or German. Once he even heard something rather Scandinavian that he thought might be Norwegian. And then one night he heard someone speaking English.

He almost missed it, thought it was another of his audio hallucinations, but he went back just the same. Turned the dial, slowly and carefully, until the voice returned faintly. He couldn't tell if the speaker was a man or woman, couldn't make out more than the occasional word, so he brought his ear closer to the radio, and listened harder.

Then something changed—the earth's magnetic field, the subsidence of a solar flare, who knew—and the voice came in clearly. A male voice. With a distinctive Scottish brogue.

"There is a sanctuary from infection. We have secured Dumbarton Castle in Scotland. We can provide food and safety. If you are listening to this message, we can help."

The voice provided directions to the castle from all directions and then began to repeat.

Doyle nearly wept with relief. Cowley was alive. What's more, Cowley had created a stronghold against the infected. And if Cowley had survived, then maybe Bodie had too.

He listened to the message three more times before he could move, then shook Stuart awake.

"Cowley's done it," he told a still weary Stuart.

"Done what?"

"Listen." He shoved the radio at Stuart, and listened once again as Cowley declared the existence of a refuge, as he gave directions and offered dry encouragement. When they'd listened several more times, he snapped off the radio and put it down.

"We're going to Scotland," he told Stuart, and this time he knew he was going to accept no argument.

* * *

  
Bodie awoke to the sound of crying.

The sound was quiet and restrained, as if the person weeping was trying desperately not to be heard. It was the sound of furtive despair.

As more senses returned, Bodie could feel the hard floor beneath him, could smell blood and vomit, could hear the thrum of an engine.

He cracked one eye open, and found that he was on the floor of a bus. From where he lay, he could see the feet and legs of the passengers surrounding him, crowding him. Legs in surgical scrubs, bare legs exposed by hospital gowns. Black clad legs in police uniforms. His strength began to return, and he sat up, only to find the source of the crying. It was not a patient, nor a nurse, but a young police constable in riot gear, who clutched the seat in front of him and let the tears roll down his cheeks unimpeded, even as the other passengers looked away from him.

"You woke up," a gruff voice said. Bodie turned to see another policeman nearer his own age and with a look of bland curiosity. "We weren't sure you would."

"I have a hard head," Bodie said as he tried to sort out how he'd got here. "Bodie," he said, holding out his hand.

"Cameron," the policeman said, shaking the offered hand with a sure, callused grip.

Bodie nodded, then closed his eyes against the nausea that threatened to overwhelm him. Why was he here? He traced the path back. CI5. Lena's call. The infected. "Ray." He opened his eyes and tried to stand, just as the bus lurched around a corner, knocking him off his already unsteady feet. Cameron caught him with one arm and pulled him down on the seat beside him.

"We have to stop," he said. "I have to go back."

"For this Ray?"

Bodie nodded. "He's my mate. My best mate." And so much more he could not admit to in front of this gruff stranger and a bus full of traumatized civilians.

"Was he at Guy's?"

"In the trauma ward."

"Then he's dead."

The words were delivered coldly, without feeling. A part of his brain, the professional part, the part that could make jokes after witnessing cold-blooded murder, reckoned this man had seen so much death this day that the death of one more hardly mattered to him. But the rest of him had a sudden sympathy with the still weeping police constable.

"He can't be."

"The hospital fell," Cameron said clearly. "Only a few buses got out, and none with seriously ill patients. Your best mate is either dead or turned.

"No." Bodie knew it must be true. Doyle could not have survived if the infected had taken over Guy's. He must be dead. But he couldn't accept the truth without the impossible: a body to mourn and bury.

He recovered enough to look out the window, only to find a landscape he didn't recognize.

"Are we going to Heathrow?"

"Heathrow fell too. We're heading to Dover."

"Dover?"

"Some think the ferries might still be running." Cameron's tone of voice suggested he didn't share the belief, but had no other suggestions to offer.

"If Heathrow's gone, the ports won't be any better." Bodie put away his grief for the moment and tried to think like a soldier, like one of Cowley's best men. Cowley… "We need to make for Scotland."

"Scotland?" Cameron sounded completely incredulous. "That blow you took did more damage than I thought. There's nothing up in Scotland. Nothing but sheep and the infected."

"I'm CI5. We were in charge of Heathrow. If the airport fell, we were to rendezvous at Watford, then make our way to Scotland.

"Scotland's a worse choice than Dover. We're not going there."

"Then stop and let me out. I'll go myself."

Cameron shook his head. "I hauled you out of Guy's because you're a fighter. I need you fighting for us. Not up in Scotland where some sheep-shagging infected can turn you.

"Stop the bus."

"No."

Bodie took a deep breath, ignored the dizzying pain that was threatening to bring him to his knees, and acted.

He drew the pistol from his holster, knocked off the safety, hammered it back, and pressed it against Cameron's head. Shusai would have been proud of the fluidity and conviction of his action, if not necessarily of the action itself.

"Stop. The. Bus." He didn't shout; the weapon did his shouting for him.

"This lot could use your help."

"I take my orders from George Cowley," Bodie said, ignoring the fact he was only here now because he had ignored Cowley's orders. "Now are you going to stop the bus, or am I going to put a bullet in your head?"

"Mickey," Cameron yelled forward, without taking his eyes off Bodie. "Stop the bus, would you."

"You're joking," called back the unseen Mickey.

"No, I'm not. Stop the fucking bus."

Mickey put his foot on the brake and the bus came to a screeching halt. Bodie made his way to the front, ignoring the stares of its frightened passengers and Cameron's judging glare. He glanced outside, thankful that they'd stopped on the outskirts of some Kent market town, with no obvious signs of the infected. There was a pub car park across the road with the choice of a few cars to nick. Though he wondered if it counted as stealing if the owner was never coming back.

He gestured to the unlucky Mickey to open the door, and looked back once at Cameron.

"I'm sorry," he said, and then he was out of the bus and on the street.

Mickey barely waited till his feet hit the pavement before he had the bus on the go again, the lumbering thing roaring past Bodie, nearly running him over.

He stomped down on the feelings washing over and through him: the anguish of not saving Doyle; the grief at Doyle's death; the despair that anything he did would have no meaning. He would go on. Because he always had gone on, and because Doyle would expect him to, and Cowley, if he were still alive, needed him to. Continuing was the only meaning he had left in the world, and he would cling to it.

He did a quick check that there were no infected ready to attack, and took a deep breath.

"Right," he said to the sky, to the pavement, to no one at all. "Scotland."


	2. Arrival

Bodie stood at the castle's gate and checked his equipment. His handgun was loaded, he had extra shells for the shotgun in his pocket and his machete was within easy reach. His leathers were zipped up and whole, if you didn't count the tear in his left elbow that was a souvenir of his adventure at Guy's, and his protective goggles were hung around his neck.

"You ready to go?" Murphy asked.

Bodie nodded in response.

"Do you want me to come along?"

"No, Murph." He shook his head, just like he always did. "I'll be fine."

"Right, then," Murphy said, an unspoken awkwardness hanging in the air between them. "Be careful."

"I always am," Bodie said, though they both knew that was a lie.

Bodie was anything but careful. He took chances no one else would, ventured into nests of infected that even Cowley deemed it unwise to disturb. He had become, in his loss, an avenging angel, intent on destroying every infected human on England's shores. Intent on wiping out all of the creatures that had taken Ray from him.

It was that, embark on this quixotic crusade, or eat his own gun. Bodie had never been one for suicide. The act of a coward, he had always considered it, and he was no coward. Even if he did sometimes think it would be easier to simply lie down and die, to let oblivion take away the pain of his loss.

Instead, he turned his pain into rage, and used rage as his fuel on the patrols Cowley insisted upon every day.

They weren't supposed to do solo patrols, but these days no one wanted to pair up with Bodie. Not even Murphy, for all that he still offered. "A right nutter," he'd heard Jax call him when he hadn't known Bodie was on the other side of a storeroom door. The civilians in their castle stronghold were outright afraid of him. Bodie didn't care about any of them. He liked being out there alone, just him and the infected, his ferocity matched to theirs.

"Remember," Murphy was saying, "be back before sunset."

"Yes, mother."

"And you're meant to get supplies from the university and look for survivors, not just kill those fucking monsters."

"I will," Bodie said, another lie between them. He'd told so many lies in the last few weeks that they didn't cause him a single pang now.

"Off you go, then." Murphy gestured to the two lads controlling the castle gate. Bodie climbed into the Land Rover, revved it up, and sped off as soon as the gate was open enough to allow him. It was a cool summer day, with clouds scudding across the sky without threatening rain, much like the day he'd arrived at the Watford rendezvous, roaring up to the car park in a Vauxhall estate, not entirely sure if he'd find Cowley or hordes of the infected.

Murphy and Jax had been the first faces he saw that day, and he'd seen their relief and pleasure at his appearance. He could tell they were planning on taking the piss out of his choice of transport, the best of a bad lot he'd had to choose from when he'd been dumped out of that bus. He'd taken it all away from them—the relief, the pleasure, the good-natured ribbing—with his first words.

"Doyle's dead."

He'd seen the colour drain from Murphy's face, seen the light go out of Jax's eyes. And he'd taken a grim satisfaction that there were others who could share his grief at this one death, surrounded as they were by so many of the dead.

They brought him to Cowley, who mouthed platitudes about how Doyle had been a good man. He'd been in constant motion since that day. First, there was the journey to Dumbarton, and the task of cleansing the castle of all infected. Then there had been the long slow job of helping Cowley restore his beloved Britain.

If he wasn't scrounging the Glasgow universities and hospitals for supplies for the scientific boffins Cowley had managed to find, or on a patrol searching for survivors to rescue and infected to kill, he was taking watch on the ramparts or doing maintenance on the weapons they'd managed to find. Anything to keep himself busy, to keep from thinking about Ray, torn to pieces in that hospital bed, dying horribly and alone.

One assignment Bodie avoided, assiduously, was training the civilians they'd rescued. Cowley insisted everyone, young and old, male and female, learn how to fight. Everyone needed to be able to defend themselves and the castle. All existing members of CI5 had been drafted to the cause. Murphy taught shooting and sniping. Jax, one of the best with a handgun outside of Doyle, coached willing students to use pistols and revolvers. And Jack Craine taught hand-to-hand combat and the proper use of the flamethrowers Cowley had liberated from a military warehouse somewhere between London and Glasgow.

Bodie could see the sense in it, but he didn't have the patience to deal with some scared, green civilian who didn't know a revolver from a semi-automatic. And after the second time Bodie had made a grown man weep in fear and frustration, Cowley stopped insisting he teach a class.

Bodie squealed around a corner and onto the Glasgow Road, taking his usual route through Dumbarton into Glasgow, looking for signs of the infected and the healthy.

They'd had a few survivors find them in the days since Cowley had started his radio broadcast, his siren call to the healthy, but the numbers were depressingly few.

There always seemed to be infected in the area, though. Bodie wondered what he would do when he'd killed the last of the infected, when he no longer had a target for his rage and pain.

The houses started thinning out, and he shifted the Rover as high as it would go and floored it, revelling in the speed, trying not to think about how much he wished Ray was here beside him.

"Watch out, you maniac," Ray would say, his eyes sparkling with mischief in spite of his complaints.

"Go on. You love it," he'd say, knowing he and Ray were a matched set, both loving the speed and the adrenaline coursing through their veins. They'd laugh, and he'd find a safe place to pull over, and then they'd be kissing and fumbling with buttons and zippers.

A flicker of movement pulled him from his impossible daydream.

It had come from the hotel to his left, a lumbering mock Tudor monstrosity that must have done a good trade in weddings before the virus had hit. He turned into  
the hotel car park, pulled in front of a Jag whose owner was no doubt long dead, and stopped the Rover. There was no movement now, but he could have sworn he'd seen someone, at the edge of the building. He confirmed the shotgun was loaded and left the safety of the car.

He'd found a nest of infected here already, three weeks ago. He'd killed them all and burned the bodies in the field behind the hotel. The pile of ash was probably still there, not that he was about to go looking for it.

He edged up to the hotel, then slowly made his way to the rear. Taking a deep breath and shaking his shoulders loose, he turned the final corner, and found himself in the rear car park, facing not a pack of the infected, but five black-clad men, aiming five handguns at his head.

"Who are you?" he barked out without dropping his own weapon, his shotgun aimed firmly into the middle of the group.

"Are you one of Cowley's men?" a voice asked from behind. He turned to see the one person on this fucking island he would have cheerfully seen stripped to the bone by the infected.

"Willis," he said through gritted teeth.

"Bodie, how nice to see you've survived," Willis said, while the expression in his eyes suggested he was as thrilled with Bodie's survival as Bodie was with his. "Now why don't you take us to see George?"

* * *

  
They were, at last, on the road.

Doyle hadn't thought it would take so long, but Stuart didn't seem to want to leave London. Even knowing Cowley was alive, that there was a sanctuary in Scotland, he didn't want to leave the hell he knew for an uncertainty. Doyle could sympathize, but he wasn't about to let Stuart keep him in the south. Not when Bodie might be alive in Scotland.

So Doyle bullied and pushed and cajoled, until, three days after they first heard Cowley's broadcast, Stuart agreed to leave for Scotland. A further two days of winnowing their supplies to the essentials, and picking the best vehicle for the trip—a brand new Range Rover from a dealership in Kensington—and they were on their way.

Much as Doyle wanted to do nothing more than blast up to Scotland as fast as they could, there was one place he wanted to go. He convinced Stuart to stay on the M1 past Rugby and head up to Derby. He had to check on his family, his mum, his sisters. Had to see if there were any of the Doyle clan left to save, even knowing how unlikely it was. Stuart didn't comment, just followed Doyle's directions. Doyle wondered what had happened to Stuart's family, his friends. Wondered if he'd already tried to find them.

He kept his question to himself, though. They both deserved some measure of privacy. It wasn't as if he were about to confess to Stuart exactly how deep his own feelings for Bodie ran, and exactly why he was willing to go to such lengths to find him.

They were driving through the suburb where Doyle had grown up, perhaps two streets from his mum's house. They'd already tried his sister Katie's house. It had been empty but undisturbed, as if Katie and her tribe had just stepped out to the shops. His little sister Mary's flat had been in worse shape, torn apart, with furniture and clothing thrown about, the fridge door open with decaying food inside. But there had been no body there either. Doyle was beginning to hope he'd find the whole family at his mum's, that they'd be waiting there for him, and they could all go up to Scotland together. A mad fantasy, but it was the only hope he had.

They turned a corner, when the quiet and stillness was broken by movement and shouting. Two creatures had broken from the side of one of the houses and were running towards the car, arms waving crazily.

"Christ," said Stuart as he sped up. "More fucking infected."

Doyle wasn't sure why, but he looked back as they raced away. There was something wrong with the two creatures' movements. They weren't as jerky as those of the other infected he'd seen. Their waving arms seemed less threatening, and more like they were trying to attract their attention.

"Fucking hell," Doyle said as the realization hit him. "They're not infected." He looked harder. "Turn back."

Even as he watched, there was movement behind the people, a woman and a girl. Four more figures, these clearly infected, emerged onto the street and began running after the woman and girl.

"Turn back, Stuart," Doyle yelled as Stuart kept going forward.

"I'm not risking my life for two people I don't even know."

Doyle didn't even have to think about his response. He grabbed the wheel and the handbrake and did a screaming turn worthy even of Bodie's mad driving. Stuart didn't say anything about his driving being hijacked, simply pulled out of the turn and sped up, his mouth flattened into a thin line.

They reached the woman and girl in seconds, with the infected rapidly catching up to them. Stuart pulled to a stop, and Doyle was out, hustling them into the back seat before jumping back into the passenger seat.

They got moving just as the first infected, a woman with long dark hair, blood red eyes, and a mouth that was like a gaping maw, reached them. Stuart floored the Rover and ran over the infected, which made the girl, already weeping, scream.

"Mum!" the girl managed to gasp out.

"Is your mum close by?" Doyle asked. "Can we go get her?"

"No," said the girl, shaking her head. "That thing-" She broke off and shuddered before continuing. "That thing you hit. That was my mum." At those words, she began to wail and buried her face in the woman's shoulder.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Stuart muttered as he accelerated down a high street. "You're in charge of them," he said, turning briefly to Doyle. "Do you understand? They're your responsibility."

Doyle ignored Stuart's outburst and concentrated on their passengers, clutching each other in the back seat.

The woman was probably in her thirties, though it was hard to tell under the tears and grime. The girl was perhaps ten or twelve, with the long-limbed awkwardness that showed puberty wasn't far off. Both shared the same dark hair and fine-boned faces that marked them clearly as family.

Before Doyle could say anything, the woman frowned.

"Doyle?" she said. "Ray Doyle?"

Doyle nearly laughed at the absurdity of it, saving someone from monsters straight out of a Hammer horror film, only to find she knew you.

"I'm sorry, I don't-"

"I'm Grace Edwards," she said. "I was friends with Katie."

"Grace?" Doyle had a memory of a group of his sister's friends laughing at him when his voice started breaking. Katie had been one of them, but always a little smarter, a little quieter than the rest. "But you went away. To medical school, wasn't it?"

"I ended up in biochemistry and immunology."

"I thought you were in London."

"I was. I was a researcher at UCL. I came up here when everything went wrong. I was hoping I could help Wendy get out. Or at least stay safe. Do you remember my sister, Wendy?"

Doyle nodded. "Is that Wendy's girl?" Doyle looked at the girl, still cowering in Grace's arms.

"Yeah." Grace hugged the girl tighter. "We're all that's left of the Edwards family now."

Doyle was sure he didn't want to hear the answer to his next question, but he had to ask it.

"Do you know anything about Katie, or my mum?"

"They're gone, Ray." Grace's tone was final, her expression even more bleak.

"Mary?"

"Gone."

"How?"

"They're just gone. Leave it at that, Ray. For all our sakes."

"Christ." Doyle turned back in his seat and stared unseeingly into distance, this news just one more disaster he didn't want to handle, but had to. After all this, Bodie had to be alive. He just had to.

"As touching as this reunion is," Stuart broke in, "I need your help, Doyle. You know this bloody town. How do I get back to the bloody motorway?"

Doyle broke free from the gloom that was closing in, introduced Grace to Stuart, and set about getting them back on the way to Scotland.

* * *

  
Bodie somehow held back from his impulse to pull the trigger and take out Willis and his men. He waited while they packed up their kit, then led them back to the castle in a small convoy, on the lookout for the infected the whole way. The infected didn't often come out during the day, but loud noises tended to attract them.

They made it back to Dumbarton and the castle without an attack, though Bodie still felt his skin crawling the whole way. He put it down to Willis' presence, rather than an imminent attack by the infected.

When Bodie brought Willis to the command centre in the castle's main building, Cowley looked no more pleased to see Willis than Bodie had felt.

"It's good to see you, Willis," Cowley said, though Bodie could tell it cost him.

"I sincerely doubt that, George," Willis said with a curl to his lip.

"Given the circumstances, I'm glad to see anyone alive." And that really did sound sincere. Bodie knew how hard Cowley had fought the past month. Fought to save England, fought to save her people. And now, when most thought everything had been lost, he was fighting to find a cure for this fucking virus that seemed to have taken away everything.

"Yes, well…" Willis trailed off, as if he couldn't find a single gracious thing to say in the circumstances.

"I assume you'll want to stay with us?"

"If you would be so kind." Willis looked unaccustomed to playing the role of supplicant. "My men have been on the run for too long."

"Where did you come from?"

"We were guarding the ferry docks at Plymouth. We managed to get a number of ships safely off, but there were thousands still waiting at the docks when the perimeter fell." He shook his head. "It was a bloodbath."

"I can imagine."

"You were at Heathrow?"

"We were."

"And was it bad?"

"A bloodbath," Cowley admitted, then shrugged. "I'll have Murphy get you and your men settled. We're a bit crowded, but there are a few quarters left to choose from."

"Thank you, George." Willis went to leave, then turned around. "I know we've had our differences, but I really am quite grateful. My men deserve better than I've been able to provide of late." He seemed so tired, so wrung out, all the artifice purged from his manner, that Bodie very nearly overcame his hatred and felt sorry for the man.

"I hope you would do the same, if our situations were reversed," Cowley said.

Willis only nodded, then left with Murphy.

"I'll be going, sir," Bodie said, then turned to leave himself.

"Stay for a minute, Bodie." Cowley sounded far too kind, which immediately put Bodie on his guard. Too many people had tried to be kind to him in the last few weeks. Since London, since Guy's, since Doyle's death. It put his teeth on edge.

"Sir." Bodie took refuge in the old military forms, snapping to attention, hoping Cowley would realize he didn't want and couldn't tolerate kindness just now.

"It's been over a month, since all this happened. Everyone is raw, everyone has lost friends and family. And I thought it might be a good idea to have a memorial service." Bodie's back was immediately up. A memorial service was the exact opposite of a good idea, as far as Bodie was concerned. "It will give everyone a way to remember the people they've lost. Give them a way to move on."

And there was the thing. Bodie didn't _want_ to move on. Doyle had been all he'd had in life, friend, family, everything. He didn't want to relegate him to the status of fond memory. He wanted the idea of him alive and raw, even if it nearly fucking killed him every time he thought of Ray, every time he saw something he thought Ray would appreciate.

"I thought everyone could give a short speech about someone they've lost." Cowley was continuing. "I thought you might want to speak about Doyle."

Bodie clamped his jaw tightly shut and tried not to say what he wanted to: _Are you fucking insane? Do you know what you're asking of me? Don't you know it will break me?_

"Well," Cowley said finally, when the silence had stretched out between them for far too long. "What do you think?"

"I respectfully decline, sir." Only four words, but Bodie nearly couldn't spit them out.

Cowley stared at him for a few more moments, and Bodie felt as if he'd been examined more closely than he ever had in his life, as if Cowley had dissected him down to the cellular level. But then Cowley's shoulders fell and the steel left his expression.

"Ach, there's no getting you to do anything you don't want to. I imagine all your commanding officers have found that out."

"Yes, sir."

"Off with you." Cowley waved him out of the room, and Bodie didn't wait for the order to be repeated.

"Bodie?" Cowley said as he hit the threshold.

"Sir?"

"You'll let me know? If you change your mind?"

"Yes, sir," he said, though he was quite sure they both knew that wasn't ever going to happen.

* * *

  
They had stopped in a farmer's field outside of Stoke-on-Trent. They could have gone further, possibly all the way to Dumbarton, but none of them had had the heart to continue.

Lily had stopped crying, after a time, but had continued to shake with fear, her body pumping more adrenaline into her system than she could handle. Grace had wrapped her niece in a blanket Doyle had supplied and held her, comforting her as best she could, though Grace herself was clearly showing the strain of the horrors she'd been through. Stuart clenched the steering wheel and scowled. After his initial outburst, he'd kept his thoughts on Grace and Lily to himself, so Doyle wasn't sure if he was pissed off they'd saved them, pissed off Doyle had taken the wheel from him, or reliving visions of his own particular hell.

And Doyle…Doyle had sat in the passenger seat, his feet on the dashboard, and tried not to curl in on himself and scream in despair.

His mum was gone. Dead, one way or the other. And his sisters. And Katie's kids. Every single blood relation he had, wiped out at a stroke.

Now he sat in a farmer's field, a sleeping bag wrapped around his shoulders, huddled in front of the tiny fire that was all they dared risk. Light, Stuart told them, brought the infected. But light was exactly what they needed, whatever the danger it might bring.

Lily had fallen asleep an hour ago, exhaustion overcoming grief and anxiety. With a blanket pulled up to her nose, she looked more vulnerable than she had after her mother had gone under the wheels of their car.

Doyle stared at Grace and tried not to ask questions he didn't want answered: had his mum been killed by the infected, or had she become one of them? Was Katie dead, or was she wandering through her old neighbourhood, looking for prey? It would do him no good to know these things. Once he knew, he couldn't _un_ know. Ignorance might not be bliss, but it might actually be better than the truth, just this once.

"So you're a scientist." Stuart broke the silence.

"Yes," Grace answered tentatively. And well she might. It was the first time Stuart had opened his mouth since Derby.

"Biology?"

"Biochemistry," Grace corrected. "And immunology." Doyle saw her tense up, and even he could see where this was going.

"Looked at viruses, did you?"

"I mostly worked with bacteria. And I didn't have anything to do with the rage virus, if that's what you're getting at."

"Rage virus?" Doyle hadn't known the thing that had destroyed his world while he was sleeping had a name.

"That's what they called it, Doyle," Stuart said, the bitterness quite clearly audible in his voice. "The idiots who created the fucking thing."

"If they'd been idiots, it wouldn't have been so bad," Grace said. "But they were clever. They knew what they were doing. And they created something that's going to be bloody hard to kill."

"How would you know?" Doyle had a sudden twinge that here was something very important, something worth paying attention to.

"We were all looking at it, after the outbreak started. Every lab in the country. Everyone who had even a passing knowledge of viruses was trying to find a cure. Or a vaccine. Any way to eradicate the virus."

"And did you? Find a way to eradicate it?"

"Of course they didn't, Doyle." Stuart spit out the words with what could only have been utter contempt. "We wouldn't be sitting in the middle of a fucking field, cowering from fucking zombies if they had, would we?"

"Shut up, Stuart." Doyle kept his attention directed towards Grace. "Did you, Grace?"

"Well…" She trailed off and looked down at her hands twisting in her lap. "Our lab thought they might have found something. Not a cure, but a possible vaccine. But it was understandably hard to find anyone who wanted to volunteer to be a test subject. It was an immediate death sentence, if we were wrong."

"And…" Doyle prompted.

"And, nothing." Grace shrugged. "We hadn't decided how to test it. Things got worse. I got a panicked call from my sister and legged it up to Derby. And that's it."

"And we're back where we started," Stuart said with a bitter laugh. "Utterly fucked."

"I said, shut up, Stuart." Doyle resisted the urge to beat Stuart until his knuckles were bloody. "Could you reproduce what your lab was doing?"

"Maybe. Probably. But I'd need a proper lab. Equipment. Electricity. None of that's going spare at the moment, Ray."

"But if you had the equipment?"

"I could do it, yeah." Doyle could see Grace put down her grief and begin thinking. He could see the ideas flash through her eyes, see the calculations she was making.

"Fantastic, Doyle. She could do it if she had something that's impossible to get."

"Use your head, Stuart." Doyle was impatient. If he could see this, why couldn't Stuart? "Who is the one man on this island who seems to have set up a refuge from the infected?"

"Cowley, but-"

"And who," Doyle said, cutting off Stuart before he could voice any objections, "is the one man who would understand that looking for a cure would be the only way to save the country, and would be determined enough to set up a lab to do it?"

"Cowley," Stuart admitted reluctantly.

"Cowley," Doyle repeated. He turned back to Grace. "I think we might be going to the one place where you can do the most good."

Cowley would have a lab. Doyle was convinced of it. Just as he was convinced that Bodie must be with Cowley.

And Bodie was the only family he had left.

* * *

  
Bodie had tried. He really had.

He couldn't make himself set foot in the great hall for the memorial service, but he sat outside the door, listening as Cowley presided over a ritual that had been embraced by every other member of their makeshift community. He'd listened as Cowley read from the Bible, his brogue grown stronger now that he was on his native soil. He'd listened to Murphy's remembrances of his mother, presumed lost in Wimbledon, and to one of the scientists, a young man barely in his twenties, describing his girlfriend, a fellow researcher killed in that final mad scramble at Heathrow. He'd stuck it out for memories of wives and husbands, parents and children.

But then Jax had stood up and started to tell a story of a friend lost, and Bodie realized it was Doyle, and he couldn't get out of the building fast enough.

The impact of his grief had been physical. He'd nearly thrown up, as if his emotions were a poison he needed to purge. Nearly blind with panic, he rushed for the exit, not caring about the commotion he caused or who had craned their necks to view his exit. Not caring about anything until he was out in the cool evening air, a fresh breeze blowing off the river and into his face.

He paid no attention to the cooling tracks of wet down his face—he didn't cry, _wouldn't_ cry—and made for the rampart, ignoring and ignored by the two B squad blokes who'd drawn the short straw and were on guard duty this night.

Don't be an idiot, he told himself. Doyle would laugh himself sick if he saw you.

He took in a great lungful of air, and tried to recall what Shusai had taught him about overcoming strong emotion, failing when he remembered that his sensei also must be dead.

Knowing he could not stay here, he stood straight and headed for the steep path behind the main building.

Most of the inhabitants of Dumbarton had rooms in the main building, the Governor's House. As more refugees arrived and more space was needed, some had taken over the old French prison on the other side of the crag the castle nestled against. Willis and his men had taken the rooms in the Guard House set over the steep path up the crag.

None of those places had appealed to Bodie. They were all crowded with the remnants of Britain's people that Cowley had gathered here. He wanted solitude, not company. And so he'd set up his kit in the Magazine, an isolated building on the top of Dumbarton Rock. It had been built in the 19th century to store gunpowder. Now it housed the castle's weapons, ammunition, and Bodie.

Bodie mounted the stairs that would take him through the Guard House and to the Magazine, but stopped when he reached the small brick structure, his senses telling him there was something off.

He drew the gun he always carried now, and listened.

At first there was nothing more than the blowing of the wind, the stray call of a bird settling for the night. But then, just as he began to believe he'd been imagining things, he heard a low whisper.

He drew closer to the Guard House, and the whispering resolved into scattered words, then whole sentences.

"Rob and Jamie, you secure the weapons. We don't want any trouble," said the soft male voice. Howard, Bodie realized. Willis' second-in-command. "The rest of us will wait until the service is over, and then we'll take over. Remember, it's the scientists we want. Take out any of those CI5 bastards who give you trouble, but don't touch the scientists. Or Cowley. Willis wants to deal with that old bastard personally."

Fucking hell, thought Bodie, even as he quickly ran through the possibilities. Go for help, and they might have time to secure the Magazine and its weapons. Yell for the blokes on guard duty, and it would be the same result. Stay and fight, and it would be at least six to one against. Bodie closed his eyes and tried to remember how many of Willis' men had been at the service. There had been a few. Enough to allay suspicion, anyway.

He could hear the sounds of armed men moving and knew he'd run out of time, out of options.

He moved quickly and pressed against the side of the Guard House, just beside the arch Howard and his men would have to pass through to get to the Governor's House. He made it just in time. The first of the four men came through mere seconds after he made it in position.

Bodie waited until they were all past, and then opened fire. There was no time for tactics, he just needed to put as many of these bastards down as he could, then get to the Magazine before the last two could barricade themselves in with the weapons.

The element of surprise worked in his favour. Two of the four went down without firing a shot. Howard and one other man lasted a few moments longer, but Bodie put them down as well. Two were dead, he noted automatically. The other two might survive. Maybe.

One of the B squad men, drawn by the gunfire, was running up the path towards him.

"It's Willis' men," he yelled down. "Go warn Cowley."

Burns stood there for a moment, frozen with indecision.

"Now!" Bodie screamed, and then headed up towards the Magazine without waiting to see if his orders had been followed. There was no time to lose.

The path to the Magazine was steep, but running up mountain paths was the sort of thing he'd been trained to do in the SAS. He gained steadily on Willis' men, but couldn’t quite catch them up. They were fifty yards from the Magazine when he took a risk. He stopped, dropped to one knee, aimed, and fired. The front man dropped. The second man halted and hesitated, clearly unsure what to do.

"Don't be a fool," Bodie yelled at him, his gun firmly trained on him. "Drop it."

The man waited the time it took for Bodie to draw one more deep breath of air, then tossed his gun to the side and put his hands up.

"Good lad," Bodie said.

The memorial service had spilled outside and degenerated into chaos by the time Bodie marched his prisoner down to the Governor's house. Willis' last four men were surrounded by CI5 agents, and Willis and Cowley were engaged in a shouting match at their centre.

They both turned to Bodie as he approached.

"That man is a menace," Willis yelled, his finger pointed firmly in Bodie's direction. "He always has been. He shot my men without provocation."

Bodie ignored Willis and his righteous indignation, and spoke directly to Cowley.

"They were launching a coup, sir. I heard them planning to capture the boffins. The four I shot were going to break in on the service." He pushed his prisoner at Willis. "This one and a friend were on their way to take over the weapons store when I stopped them."

"He's lying," Willis said, his expression heated.

"William Bodie is many things, but he is not a liar," Cowley said firmly to Willis. "I wish I could say the same of you."

"How dare you-"

"No." Cowley stopped Willis' tirade cold with a glare more ferocious than Bodie had ever seen. "How dare _you_? How dare you play power games when the survival of everyone in this castle, on this island, should be your primary concern?"

"Don't pretend you're above making a play for power, George. What is this place but your private fiefdom?"

"I'll not have this called a fiefdom. I'm a servant of the people here, nothing more."

"And what is this servant of the people going to do with us, George?"

"A bit better than you had planned for me and my men. Banishment."

Willis' men were silent and stone-faced, but Bodie thought one or two of them looked paler than they had.

"You can't…" Willis spluttered.

"I can, and I will. You obviously can't be trusted to act in the best interest of anyone but yourself. It's bad enough having the infected trying to kill us, but at least it's only instinct with them. I won't harbour those who'd do the same in the name of power."

"Banishment starting when?" Willis at least had the good sense not to argue his sentence.

"Tomorrow morning. You can bury your dead and patch up your wounded, and then I want you gone. You can take the vehicles and supplies you brought with you. We'll give you back your weapons once you're outside the walls. And if I see you within fifty miles of this place, I won't be nearly so merciful." Cowley turned to Murphy. "Search them, and then lock them up in the Guard House." Cowley watched as Murphy, Craine and a few other CI5 agents frisked Willis and his crew and hustled them back towards the Guard House, where the men Bodie had shot still lay, then looked at Bodie. Bodie wasn't sure how to read his expression. The fire that had driven him while he confronted Willis was banked, and Cowley looked more exhausted than anything. "Bodie," he said, his voice almost gentle. "A word."

Bodie followed Cowley to the edge of the ramparts, and the two of them stood there for several long minutes. Cowley stared intently at Bodie as the day's last light faded around them. Bodie just as intently ignored Cowley as he pretended to be interested in the way the last of the sun's rays glinted off the river before him.

"You never makes things easy, do you, lad?"

"Would you have preferred I'd waited until they'd shot you and taken over the castle?" Bodie could still feel the adrenaline humming through his veins. He was even less inclined than usual towards tact.

"No." Cowley sighed, then seemed to let the matter drop. "You weren't at the service."

"Good thing I wasn't, or I'd never have stopped Willis."

"You can't go on this way, Bodie. Doyle's dead."

"I know that, sir."

"You have to let him go, lad."

"Respectfully, sir, no I don't." Bodie didn't say anything else, because in the end it was none of Cowley's damned business if he let go of Doyle or not. And because he couldn't bear to have this conversation one more time, he turned and headed toward the Magazine.

"Bodie!" Cowley called after him. Bodie just shook his head and started running. He wished he could keep running, keeping going until he was away from Cowley and Murphy and Jax and all the well-meaning people who wanted to save him from his grief, to save him from himself.

He wanted to run until he was alone with himself, the sky, and his memories of Doyle, but he had to stop when he reached the stone wall that surrounded the castle and its grounds. The wall that protected them from the all the horrors of the world except the ones they'd brought with them.

He wanted to scream, to howl, to bring down the heavens with his cries, but he was too disciplined a soldier for that. Instead he gave the bloody wall a kick with a booted foot and then collapsed at its base, the stars the only witnesses to his frustration and pain.

* * *

The next morning, the only thing Doyle wanted to do was to get in the car and drive as fast as he could to Scotland. To Cowley. And, so he hoped, to Bodie.

But he had more than his own wants to consider. Lily was still visibly shaken, and Grace seemed unsure what to do with her. Doyle thought back to his time volunteering with the youth group, working with kids who got beat up, kids who were afraid, and he had an idea.

"Lily," he said as they were all munching on a breakfast of cereal bars. "Have you ever shot a gun?"

"Doyle!" Stuart and Grace said simultaneously.

"She's a little girl," Grace said.

"You don't give a weapon to a kid," Stuart said, clearly appalled.

"She's not that little. Are you Lily?" Doyle gave the girl a wink, and fancied he almost coaxed a smile from her. "And we all need to defend ourselves. Especially now. You too, Grace."

"I don't know." Grace was hesitating, clearly torn between propriety and necessity, but Doyle thought she could see the sense in his suggestion. To survive this long, to look after her sister and niece, she must have done more than she let on in Lily's presence.

"C'mon. I'll just show you a few things."

"It better be damned few," Stuart said. "You start shooting, and the sound is going to draw the infected, sooner or later."

"We're in the middle of a field, Stuart. Even if the infected show up, we'll have plenty of warning."

In the end they had nearly two hours before three infected appeared at the edge of the field, braving the daylight to head in their direction. In those two hours, Doyle showed both Lily and Grace how to load, aim, and shoot a gun, though finding a pistol small enough for Lily's hand was a challenge. He eventually found a Walther PPK-L buried in the bottom of the pack with their weapons that Lily could manage with both hands. In spite of the challenges, she took to the shooting like a natural.

She was even better at the hand-to-hand defence techniques Doyle threw in at the last minute. She picked up on everything the first time, and was putting Doyle and Stuart down with a hip throw within minutes, a look of complete concentration on her face.

Grace had to work harder at everything, but eventually she too hit the tin cans Doyle put up as targets, and managed to take Stuart down with a leg sweep.

By the time they bundled into the Rover and roared off, Lily was looking less afraid and more determined, and Doyle was confident that both she and Grace knew enough to defend themselves both from the infected and from more human predators.

The motorways grew more desolate the further north they drove. They saw empty cars, empty shops, empty fields. The only living things they saw were a few stray cows and, in one field, a magnificent black horse and a dappled grey foal, running into the distance.

They only stopped once, on the outskirts of Manchester. All that was left of the city was a massive plume of smoke and the lick of flame on the horizon, and they watched, astonished, at the sight of an entire city consumed by a fire there was no one left to fight.

After Manchester, they were all silent, wrapped up in their own thoughts of the death and destruction they'd seen.

Doyle's mood only began to lift when they reached Glasgow, nearly the end of their journey. They drove around the outskirts of the city in that last hour before daylight fades. Doyle was astounded at how beautiful the city looked, bathed in the golden glow of the last of the day's sunshine.

They turned off the motorway, onto the Glasgow Road that would take them most of the rest of the way to Dumbarton, to the castle where all Doyle's hope resided. Doyle was at the wheel for this final leg of the journey, had insisted upon it after their stop outside Manchester. He'd needed to put as much distance between himself and that dying city as possible. Now he drove as quickly as he could towards Dumbarton Castle.

They were on a strip of road that was deserted except for a few trees and the odd house, when Doyle caught a flicker of movement at the edges of his vision.

He turned his head slightly, and saw three men, three healthy people, jumping up and down in front of a big old hotel.

"Stuart?"

"I see them," Stuart said, and Doyle could hear the same tentativeness in Stuart's voice as he felt. He knew he should be happy to find more survivors, but for some reason these three men, wearing army fatigues and so close to Cowley's stronghold, made him uneasy.

Doyle slowed the car and turned into the hotel car park. Almost before he had the car stopped, the men had opened their doors and pulled them all out, shouting and patting backs, and saying how good it was to see other survivors.

Doyle was shaking the hands of the men and smiling and trying to stamp down on the unease still making the flesh on the back of his neck crawl, when three more men emerged from the mail hotel building.

"Raymond Doyle," said the first of the men. "I thought you were dead."

"It takes more than a plague to kill me, Willis," Doyle said, calculating how fast he could draw his gun if needed.

"Who's your friend, Doyle?" Stuart was looking from Doyle to Willis and back. Doyle thought everyone in CI5 had heard about Willis and his plot to fit up Bodie, but then Stuart had probably been in deep undercover when Marikka had happened.

"Willis is MI6. And he's not exactly a friend."

"You're not still holding that grudge, are you Doyle?"

"You tell me." Doyle wanted to give nothing away. Not where Willis was concerned. The man was as twisty as a snake swallowing its own tale.

"I'm honestly happy to see you, Doyle." And if Willis didn't exactly sound sincere, Doyle had to give him credit for trying.

"Thank you."

Of course, Willis' presence brought up a host of questions.

"Why are you here, Willis? Did you hear Cowley's broadcast?"

"Ah, yes," Willis said with a sigh. "Cowley's broadcast. I suppose that's what brought you here."

"Of course it's what brought us here," Doyle said shortly. "Why else would either of us be here?"

"I'm afraid I have bad news for you, Doyle. There's no one at the castle."

"What do you mean?"

"The broadcast is a recording and the castle's empty. We were there two days ago, and it looks like it's been overrun by the infected."

"No." Doyle refused to believe that. Cowley had to be at the castle. He had to be alive. If he weren't, if the castle were deserted, if the sanctuary had been destroyed, then Bodie- No. He wasn't going to believe any of it.

"It's true, I'm afraid."

"We'll check it out ourselves, if you don't mind," Stuart said, clearly not trusting Willis any more than Doyle did.

"Oh, feel free," Willis said with a wave. "But you might want to wait until tomorrow. The sun is setting soon, and I don't want to think what the castle would be like at night. You're all welcome to stay here. The hotel has plenty of rooms, and my men have made sure there aren't any infected inside."

Doyle wanted nothing more than to tell Willis to fuck off and continue to the castle. He was convinced Willis was the same lying bastard he'd always been. But the sun _was_ just about to fall below the horizon, and it really was foolish to travel after dark when there was always a chance of there being infected about.

Turning down a safe place to sleep when he had Grace and Lily to think about would be criminally stupid.

"Thank you, Willis," Doyle said, with as much sincerity as he could muster. "We'd be grateful for your hospitality. All of us." He waved Grace and Lily over from the car.

Willis seemed to notice the woman and girl for the first time. "Who are your charming companions, Doyle?"

"Grace Edwards, and her niece, Lily."

"That wouldn't be Doctor Edwards, would it?" Willis' eyes showed an interest in Grace that Doyle couldn't help but view as suspicious.

"It would," Grace said, frowning. "Do I know you?"

"Let's just say I was following the work of a number of labs, before London completely fell apart. Your work looked most promising."

"We had hopes, but we hadn't confirmed anything."

"Still, hopes were more than the rest of us had," Willis said.

Doyle wasn't sure he liked where any of this was going. He didn't trust Willis at the best of times. Of course, it was generally the worst of times when Willis turned up at all. And he definitely didn't like the interest Willis seemed to be showing in Grace. Not when Grace was the one hope he had that this plague might be ended. Not when Willis had never acted out of altruism once in his miserable life. Doyle didn't reckon even the end of the world would stop Willis from acting purely out of self-interest.

"Listen, we can talk in the morning, but we'd like to get some kip as soon as possible. We've been driving all day and the girl is exhausted." It was an excuse, but not one that lacked an essential truth. It was obvious Lily was knackered.

"Of course," Willis said, and led them into the hotel.

Doyle let Grace and Lily go first, following with Stuart, and hoped that he wasn't going to regret his involvement with Willis as much this time as when Bodie's bloody German ex-girlfriend had made her reappearance.

* * *

  
The hospital room was as Bodie remembered it: the same smell of disinfectant and piss, the same stained beige walls, the same machines beeping and humming. At its centre, hooked up to the machines, to oxygen, to too many tubes, was Doyle.

"Jesus, Ray," Bodie said, not knowing or caring how he'd got here. "We've got to get you out of here." He set about disconnecting the machines, the tubes.

He began hearing a noise in the hallway, a slight murmur that grew until it was a muttering, then a shouting of hundreds of voices. Screaming, yelling, inarticulate voices that could only belong to the infected.

"Jesus Fucking Christ," Bodie muttered as his fingers failed him and he couldn't unhook the final machine to free Ray. He took a breath to calm the dread overwhelming him, and then with a gasp managed to break the final connection that tied Ray to the bed. "Got it," he said in triumph. "Come on, sunshine," he said, as he pulled Ray's unconscious form up and prepared to lift him.

Ray stirred in his arms, and he nearly yelled in triumph. Ray wasn't in a coma, they were going to get out of here, and everything was going to be fine.

Then Ray began grabbing at him with fingers grown like talons and Bodie began to realize something was wrong. When Ray opened eyes red as blood, Bodie only had time to scream once.

Bodie awoke from the nightmare, panting, his heart beating fast in his chest.

"Fucking hell," he said, as he tried to loosen the hold the dream had on him, to escape that last nightmarish vision of Doyle as one of the infected. He flicked on the torch he kept by his camp bed, taking comfort in the distorted shadows it threw.

The nightmares had gone away for a time. After Guy's fell, they'd been bad, unbearable even, but had faded after they set up the castle as a sanctuary. Willis and his fucking attempted coup had stirred everything up again, and his sleep had been the main victim. Sometimes it was Ray who was infected. Sometimes, Ray was attacked by the infected. And once, the worst time, Bodie had found himself infected, had watched helplessly from the inside as he'd torn Ray apart in a haze of blood and rage.

For the last three nights, sleep had become an enemy to be conquered. Every night he fought another action with it, trying to bend it to his will, trying to achieve some rest before the nightmares came.

He wasn't up for fighting another battle tonight. Better to concede for the moment and retreat to fight another night.

He zipped open his sleeping bag and threw on a jumper over his t-shirt. He pulled on his boots, zipped up his leather jacket, grabbed his weapons, and headed down the crag to the ramparts.

Jax was on sentry duty this night, and didn't seem surprised in the least to see him.

"Nightmare?" Jax asked, handing him a thermos full of coffee.

"Yeah," Bodie replied, taking a sip of the coffee. It tasted like crap but it was hot and it would keep him awake. He didn't elaborate on the vision of Ray that had driven him from his warm sleeping bag to stand guard on the cold ramparts. "Why don't you piss off? Go sleep in the entry hall." Bodie nodded at the Governor's House behind them.

"Are you sure?" Jax asked. In the flickering torchlight, Bodie could see Jax's concern warring with the desire for a good night's sleep.

"Go on," Bodie said, giving Jax a punch on the shoulder. "I'll give a shout if anyone turns up."

"Cheers, mate," Jax said, not questioning his good luck too far.

Bodie pulled his jacket closer around him, and tried not to think what might be out in the dark, beyond the reach of the arc lights illuminating the final fifty yards of the road leading to the castle. He concentrated only on what he could see: the lawn at the foot of the ramparts, the gate beyond that they manned only during the day, the roughly paved road beyond.

He tried to keep his thoughts from Doyle. Even the good memories had a way of twisting on him these days, of betraying him by turning to images of Doyle shot in the leg, or bleeding out on his rug, or pushing him away after that bloody Ann Holly left him. All of which was better than when his mind insisted on turning over what must have happened to Ray in the final moments in that hospital bed. Like it had tonight.

Christ.

He took another sip of coffee, bit his lip, and prayed this night would end sooner rather than later.

* * *

  
"Mr Doyle! Mr Doyle!"

Doyle thrashed under the blanket, struggling to understand why Lily was yelling at him in the middle of the night, and willing himself to wake up fully. Bodie always had been better at the whole waking at a moment's notice thing. "What's the matter?"

"They've got Aunt Grace. They dragged her out of the room just now."

"They? Who?" A spike of adrenaline woke Doyle up completely. "The infected?"

"No. Mr Willis and his men." Now that his eyes were adjusting to the darkness, he could see the panic in Lily's expression. "They told me to mind my own business and go back to sleep, but I couldn't."

"Christ," Doyle spat out, pulling on his boots and shrugging into his holster. "I knew I shouldn't have trusted him." He ran out of the room, Lily trailing behind him, and woke Stuart with a firm nudge. "Willis has Grace," he said. Stuart was up immediately, grabbing the shotgun he'd placed by the bed. However ambivalent he'd been about saving Grace and Lily, Stuart was clearly no happier about Willis' behaviour than Doyle was.

They raced down the hall and down the stairs, Lily at the front pulling on Doyle's arm. As they reached the ground floor they could hear shouting coming from the rear of the hotel, and Doyle pushed Lily behind him.

They emerged into the hotel's kitchen, a cavernous room, lit by the flames of a dozen candles. Grace was at the centre of the room, held by two of Willis' men.

Doyle didn’t wait for an explanation, didn't hesitate until Willis could come up with a rationalization for his actions. He waded in and punched one of the men holding Grace on the nose, ignoring the pain that exploded in his knuckles.

Bodie always told him he should watch his temper.

He thought of Bodie as he blocked punches and aimed kicks, as he took down one of Willis' men with a well-aimed boot to the goolies, and narrowly avoided the same fate himself. He and Bodie would have managed this. They each knew how the other fought. They knew when the other would break, and when he'd stand. They could work miracles together.

He and Stuart, however, were not about to work a miracle. There was never a chance they were going to win, not against six men every bit as well trained as they were, but that didn't stop him from fighting. He kept on fighting until one of Willis' men wrapped an arm around his throat and squeezed until Doyle saw stars, and even then he kept struggling until the sound of a gunshot seemed to detonate the very air around him.

The room stilled, and everyone looked to the centre, where Willis stood, one hand holding a now smoking gun, and the other wrapped in Grace's hair. Doyle could see tears leaking out of the corners of Grace's eyes, and her expression was even more panicked than it had been a minute before.

"That's quite enough, Doyle."

"Let her go," Doyle choked out, even as the bastard with his arm around his neck tightened his grip. Across the room, another of Willis' men held a gun on Stuart, while a third had Lily by the arm.

"You don't realize what she represents, do you?" Willis' voice was contemptuous.

"She's a human being, and she deserves better than having you drag her out of her bed in the middle of the night."

"She could be the only one on this island, in the world even, who can produce a cure for the rage virus. Think of the power that would bring, having the cure in your control."

"The castle really isn't deserted, is it?" Doyle could suddenly see very clearly what had happened, what was going to happen. "You tried to take control, and Cowley kicked you out."

"Cowley couldn't see the opportunity he had. And the scientists he has aren't even as far along as Dr Edwards here. With her knowledge, I can put myself and my allies in charge of any future government."

"I'll never work for you," Grace said, her voice firm, even though Doyle could see she was shaking in fear. "You're a mad man."

"Let her go," Doyle said, though he could do nothing but watch as Willis looked around the room and he calculated his next move. Doyle wished they hadn't stopped here. He wished he hadn't listened to Willis. He wished Bodie were here.

Then Willis' gaze stopped on Stuart, and he got the most horrendous smile on his face.

"One way or another, she's going to work for me." Willis said imperiously. "And I believe I know how to properly motivate her. Bring those two," he said, waving at Doyle and Stuart. "Lock the girl in the pantry."

Doyle tried to break free as he was hustled through the hotel kitchen and out the back door, Stuart behind him, Grace and Willis ahead. Their entourage passed through a car park lit only by the thin light of their torches. Willis brought them to a small building at the end of the car park, a shed that looked like it might once have been the carriage house.

The stood there for a moment, in the silence, and then Doyle heard something from within the shed. Someone—no, something—began banging against the door, over and over.

Christ, Doyle thought, it couldn't be…Willis wasn't that mad. But then the thing in the shed began to snarl in a way that Doyle had only heard from the infected. Grace's face took on a horrified expression, and Stuart began to struggle even harder.

"I see I don't need to explain what I have inside."

"What kind of an idiot are you?" Doyle asked. "You can't keep those things under control."

"Oh, I didn't mean to control it. It was meant to be an experimental subject, if I found someone to work on the cure. But unfortunately it seems to be getting a bit hungry. I was worried we might lose it to starvation."

"No," Grace said, the dawning horror clear on her face.

"Oh, yes, my dear." He turned to the man holding Stuart. "Weston, bring that one here."

Stuart tried to break free from his captor, but the man struck him on the side of the head with his gun, stunning him, even if he didn't knock him out completely.

"Don't do this, Willis," Doyle said. "It's murder."

"Murder?" Willis laughed. "Murder is what your friend Bodie committed back at the castle. He shot two of my men down in cold blood. There's another two upstairs hanging on a knife's edge."

"I'm sure they all deserved it," Doyle said, even as he rejoiced in the knowledge that Bodie was alive, was really alive.

"Just as Stuart deserves this." With that, Willis flung the door open, pushed Stuart in, and shut it swiftly again before either Stuart or the thing inside could get out. Before Willis even had time to lock the door again, an awful rending sound began inside. And then Stuart began to scream. The screams went on a long time. Forever. Grace put her hands over her ears long before it was over, tears streaming down her face. Doyle wished he could have done the same. He was going to be a long time forgetting that sound.

"Now," Willis said when it was all over. "Do I have your attention?"

"You fucking bastard," Doyle said. "What did that gain you?"

"It gave my test subject a meal, and it made the two of your realize how serious I am." He turned to Grace. "You will set up a lab and begin work on a cure to the virus immediately. If you don't cooperate, Doyle will also become a meal for the creature. Do you understand, Dr Edwards?"

Grace nodded, then drew in a great gulp of air.

"Good. Throw them both in the pantry with the girl. I don't want them to even think they can get away."

Willis' men frog-marched them both back into the hotel, in through the kitchen before stopping in front of a large iron-bound door.

From inside they could hear Lily, pounding on the door and screaming. Willis' men opened the door and threw Doyle and Grace in before Lily could get out. Doyle had the impression of a long, narrow space lined with high shelves before the door was slammed shut, blocking even the limited light from the torches. It was no wonder Lily was screaming, locked in the dark, by herself, not knowing what was happening outside.

"Aunt Grace." Lily's voice was ragged and choked. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Lily. Just fine." Grace was lying, of course, but Doyle had to admit she sounded convincing. Maybe that was what children did for you: made you a better liar when you had to hide hard truths from them.

"Where's Mr Stuart?"

"He's just outside, answering a few questions." It was a valiant attempt, but Doyle knew Grace had hesitated a second too long. So much for adults being better liars around children.

"He's dead, isn't he?" Lily sniffed loudly, the precursor, Doyle thought, to her throwing the wobbly to end all wobblies. "They killed him, didn't they?"

"No, he's not dead," Grace lied again, and her lie was more rushed, more transparent this time. Lily was going to be hysterical in no time. It was time to stop treating her like a small child. She was young, but she was going to have to face some hard truths if they were all going to get out of here.

"He _is_ dead," Doyle said, ending any further chance that Grace could continue to lie.

"Doyle!" Grace said, clearly shocked at his bluntness.

"Oh--" Lily began to sob.

"I told you because you're old enough to know, Lily." Doyle's eyes were beginning to adjust, to see shapes in the darkness, courtesy of a very small, very high window. He could see Lily in front of him, see her looking in his direction. He put a firm hand on her shoulder. "The only way we're getting out of this is if we all know what's going on. And if we all stay calm. Do you think you can do that, love? Can you stay calm until we find a way out?"

Lily took a couple of heaving breaths, and Doyle thought he'd lost her, but then she nodded.

"I can do that, Mr Doyle."

"Good girl." He squeezed her shoulder, then started looking around the pantry. "Is there anything in here we can use?" What he could see in the dim light of the room was a lot of empty shelves and a few old wooden crates in the corner he'd bet held not much more that a few mouldering potatoes.

"Nothing I could find." Lily was definitely calmer, was starting to think instead of just reacting. "There's not much of anything."

"How about the window?"

"It's too high up for me."

"Me, too. Let's do something about that, shall we." Doyle shifted some of the crates and stacked them under the window until he could reach the window. The bloody thing seemed to have been painted shut when Queen Victoria was still alive, and he couldn't move the latch. He didn't want to break the glass, though. If Willis didn't have a man on guard underneath it, he didn't want to alert him to the fact that he should.

"Here," Grace said, holding out what looked to be a potato peeler. "Try this."

It was an unlikely tool for the job, but using it, Doyle managed to scrape away the old paint holding the window shut. With difficulty, he opened the latch and pushed the window open. Only to find what he should have known from the start.

"The window's too small. I can barely get my head through it. I'd never manage to climb out."

"Let me try," Grace said.

Doyle clambered down the crates, and let Grace climb back up. But try though she might, she couldn't get out of the window either.

"I bet I could get through," Lily said, her fear apparently completely forgotten.

"No!" Doyle and Grace said simultaneously.

"It's too dangerous," her aunt said.

"But I'd fit."

"You're not doing it, young lady," said Grace.

"Mr Doyle, you told me I was old enough to know what was going on. That makes me old enough to do this."

"No, it doesn't," Doyle said firmly.

"But why not?"

"Think, Lily. If you manage to get out of the window, what then? Willis doesn't seem to have anyone guarding the outside of the window, but he'll have someone on the other side of that door. There's no way you could get us out. The only thing you could do is make for the castle. And if you do that, it won't only be Willis that's after you. It'll be the infected."

"I _know_ that," Lily said, exasperated as only as ten-year-old confronting clearly stupid adults could be. "But I spent weeks avoiding the infected with mum. And with Aunt Grace. I could get to the castle. I could bring help."

"You couldn't, Lily." Doyle tried to be gentle but steadfast. "I'm sorry, but you're not going."

Lily crossed her arms, and moved off to the furthest corner away from Doyle and her aunt. Even in the darkness of the pantry, Doyle could tell she was immersed in a fine pre-adolescent sulk. But better that than the alternative.

"We should all try and get some sleep," Doyle said. "We might come up with a better idea once the sun rises."

So they shifted the last few boxes of some lower shelves, and used bags of dried peas for pillows and settled down to sleep.

In the last few minutes before he drifted off, Doyle couldn't help taking comfort in the fact that for all the horror he was going through, Bodie was alive. That had to be a sign everything was going to be all right.

It had to be.

* * *

  
It had been a long night. Clouds had obscured the stars, and the temperature had dropped far more than was decent for summer's end. Bodie had zipped up his leather jacket, tried to ignore the cold, and kept his eyes on the road leading up to the castle, even while he tried to turn off the portion of his brain that seemed to want to think of nothing but Ray Doyle.

Doyle was dead. And if he didn't exactly want to move on, not the way Murph or even Cowley meant it, he was beginning to wish he could stop feeling this raw pain all the time.

Some time before dawn, the moon rose above the horizon. It showed through the clouds as a ghostly version of itself, casting a sickly light over everything. Bodie felt nothing but relief when false dawn began to show on the horizon, the eerie light of the moon giving way to the grey overcast of another day. The next shift would be arriving soon. Maybe he could grab some kip. Maybe the sleep that evaded him at night, except to throw new terrors at him, would give him a fucking break during the day.

He looked down at his watch in time to see it tick over to 0600, and when he looked up again, there was movement on the road.

"Jax ," he yelled, grabbing the rifle and aiming at the infected running down the castle road. "We've got company."

He closed one eye and peered through the scope, lining up his target and waiting for it to come into range. There was another flicker of motion. He looked up to see three more infected appear on the road.

"Any time, Jax!"

He heard the castle door open behind him and feet on the stone stairs as he returned his attention to the rifle's scope and prepared to fire.

* * *

  
Doyle's first thought on waking was he was cold. Colder even than he should be, sleeping in an ancient, unheated pantry in jeans and a t-shirt.

He opened his eyes and sat up. At least he could see properly now. The sun was up, and its light was filtering through the window.

The open window.

The bloody thing was jammed open with a piece of wood that must have been pried from one of the crates. That's where the cold morning air was coming from. But Doyle was positive he hadn't left it like that last night.

He looked around the pantry and found what he both expected and feared. Grace was where he had left her, asleep on the shelf across from him, but Lily was not. And in a space this small, it wasn't as if she could have hidden anywhere. There was nowhere to hide.

"Grace." He shook her arm, but she didn't wake. The previous day's event had obviously done her in. "Grace," he said, louder. "You've got to wake up."

"What is it?" she finally asked, slowly sitting up.

"It's Lily," Doyle said. "She's gone."

* * *

  
Bodie took an even breath, eased his finger onto the rifle's trigger, and prepared to fire. And then he noticed something.

"Fucking hell," he said under his breath, as Jax scrambled to set up with a second rifle beside him. "That first one's not infected."

"What?" Jax looked through his own scope. "Christ, Bodie. It's a kid."

"A girl." Now that she was closer, Bodie could see the ponytail flying behind her.

"They're gaining on her," Jax said.

Bodie didn't stop to think. "You take out those infected." He grabbed the rifle and ran to the stairs leading down the ramparts and out of the castle. "I'll get the girl."

He hit the bottom of the stairs at a run. The girl looked exhausted. There was no telling how long she'd been running, or how long she'd stay in front of the infected chasing her. He could see her clear the low flagstone wall marking the edges of the castle's property, and the limit of Cowley's realm. The infected weren't far behind her.

He heard the crack of a rifle behind him, and saw one of the infected shudder and fall.

"Run!" he yelled at the girl, and she put on an extra burst of speed. Jax fired again and took another of the infected out, but then missed on his next two shots. The girl made it to Bodie, and he got hold of her and put her behind him as the final infected drew closer. He threw down the rifle—the range was too close—and pulled out his pistol. The infected was closer, a few feet away, when he fired the contents of his clip into it. The thing went down in a cloud of blood, snarling and howling. The girl behind him was screaming.

"It's all right, love." He put a hand on her shoulder, only to have her wrap her arms tightly around his waist. It wasn't a position he'd expected to find himself in, comforting a young girl, but he did his best, patting her back until she'd stopped screaming.

She took one final gulp of air and the pulled away from him.

"Are you with Mr Cowley?" she said, the last thing he'd expected to hear from her.

"Yeah. How do you--"

"Then you have to come back with me," she said emphatically, pulling on his arm. "They're going to kill them."

"Who?" He dug in his heels to stop their forward progress. "Who's going to kill who?"

"I think one of them was called Willis. At least that was what Mr Doyle called him. And they're going to kill Mr Doyle and my Aunt Grace." She pulled at his arm more forcefully, as Bodie felt the earth reel under his feet.

"Doyle?" Bodie clutched the girl's shoulders with a desperate strength. "Is it Ray Doyle you're talking about?" Of course it had to be. Who else would send the girl for Cowley? Who else would know Willis?

"I think so." The girl suddenly looked as frightened of him as he'd been of the infected. "He and Mr Stuart rescued Aunt Grace and me in Derby." Her face started to collapse as she remembered something. "Willis killed Mr Stuart last night." She clutched at his hand. "We have to go and get them. We have to save them."

Derby. It had to be Ray. It just had to be. And he wasn't going to lose the bastard twice in one lifetime. Not if he could help it.

"Is she okay?" Jax ran up behind him, breathless.

"We have to get Cowley." Even with as few men as Willis had left, it would take a team to rescue Doyle and the girl's aunt. A team only Cowley could authorize.

"What's going-"

"Ray's alive. The girl says Ray's alive. And Willis has him."

* * *

  
It took Doyle a good two minutes to calm Grace down.

In the end, Doyle resorted to a slap to get her attention, and then took firm hold of her shoulders.

"You're not going to do Lily any good if you're hysterical."

She took a deep gulping gasp of air and clutched at his elbows.

"I know, Ray." She hiccupped the words out. "But she's all I've got. All the family that's left."

"I understand," Doyle said, wishing he had even one of his snotty-nosed nieces or nephews to claim as family himself. "But you've got to keep calm if you're going to be of any use to her."

"That's the worst part."

"What is?"

"That she thought she was being of use to _me_."

Doyle could see the signs of another hysterical fit approaching, so he shook her gently.

"Then let's get out of here and make sure you both get to be of use to each other again, shall we?"

Grace hesitated, then nodded. Doyle looked around, and they got to work.

Doyle broke one of the crates apart completely, hoping he could use a slat or a nail in it to pry off the door's hinges. They tried to break apart the windowsill, to see if they could open it up enough that one of them could make it through. They even contemplated pulling apart one of the shelves and using it as a battering ram to force the door open, but finally realized the door opened the wrong way to make that scheme at all workable.

In the end, they armed themselves with slats from the crate and waited for Willis' men, hoping that they could use the element of surprise and overpower them.

Willis' men came perhaps an hour after they'd discovered that Lily was gone. The door opened and a gun poked in and they were ordered out of the pantry. Doyle dropped his slat and with a look got Grace to do the same. If they'd had the element of surprise on their side, they might have managed it. Without it, they hadn't a snowball's chance in hell.

Willis was waiting for them outside the door.

"Have you changed your mind, Dr Edwards?"

"Absolutely not," Grace said with an encouraging amount of defiance.

"Wait." Willis frowned. "Where's the girl?" Doyle didn't say anything, and neither did Grace. Willis looked to his men. "Where is she?" he shouted.

One of the men ventured into the pantry and emerged, looking sheepish and confused.

"She's not in there, sir."

"I can see she's not in there." He turned his attention to Grace. "Where is she?"

"We don't know." Grace raised her chin and Doyle was extremely proud of her, standing up to a bully like Willis.

Willis turned as purple as an aubergine and struck her across the face with the back of his hand. Grace's head snapped back. Doyle immediately stepped between her and Willis, one fist raised.

"Don't you touch her again, you bastard."

"I'll do what I like, and with no interference from you. You probably sent the girl for help, didn't you?"

"She left on her own," Doyle insisted.

"She's a child. She wouldn't do anything so stupid on her own. It was your fault." Willis' mouth tightened. "I think you've just outlived your usefulness, Doyle." He looked to the man on Doyle's right. "Tie him up and bring him to the back."

"No!" Grace practically screamed. "You can't. Not again."

Willis grabbed her by the wrist and twisted it viciously.

"I can. And what's more, you're going to watch again. And you're going to think about what will happen if you defy me one more time."

Doyle thrashed and fought, but it was four men with guns against the two of them, and it didn't take long before his hands were bound behind him with a rough rope.

"Jesus," Grace began weeping as Willis dragged her out of the hotel, and Doyle was hauled out, squirming, by two of Willis' goons.

* * *

  
The problem with staging a rescue in a plague-ravaged countryside, Bodie reflected, was the slightest hum of a car engine would give your position away. That didn't matter if what you were chasing were the infected. They were no better than dumb animals. But if your prey was a highly trained MI6 operative, a certain amount of finesse was called for.

Mind you, Bodie wasn't entirely keen on the mode of transport Cowley had come up with to replace his beloved Capri.

He twitched the reins of the bay mare he was riding and dug his heels into her side. She launched herself and cleared the fence on the railway right of way they'd been following, landing in the narrow scrap of green between a housing estate and what looked like old military barracks. He heard the other horses, all five of them, land behind him, and follow him, galloping towards the Glasgow Road.

Bodie had been sceptical when Cowley had showed him the horses they'd saved, but he couldn't argue with Cowley pointing out that the petrol was going to run out, sooner or later. And it wasn't as if a tanker was going to roll up the River Clyde with a fresh delivery of petrol any time soon. Now he was grateful for Cowley's foresight, even if he wasn't fond of the creatures.

Bodie pulled on the reins just shy of the road, much to the annoyance of his mount. "Come on, you stupid beast," he whispered. "This is as far as you go."

He dismounted, tied the reins to the wrought iron fence surrounding the barracks, and set about sorting out his kit.

It was a mad plan Cowley had come up with. But then, it was a mad situation by any reckoning.

Bodie, Murphy, Benny, Jax and two of the better-trained civilians were the advance guard. They were to approach on horseback, and take the final few hundred yards on foot, hoping for the advantage of surprise. Jack Craine and the main force were doing a forced march on foot for the mile and a half to the hotel where Willis was holding Doyle and Grace Edwards.

A mile and a half. Bodie couldn't fucking believe it. Never mind fifty miles, Willis hadn't even shifted himself five. And he'd fetched up at the same place Bodie had first found him. The bastard had balls; there was no doubt about that.

The others had their mounts tied, and were getting ready to launch their attack as well. They all had AK-47s or Uzis, plenty of ammo, and handguns.

"Remember," Bodie said. "They've got Doyle and a civilian. We keep them safe, but Willis and his crew are fair targets."

Murphy nodded grimly, and they moved out.

The first part of the attack was the most dangerous. They had to cross the Glasgow Road in more or less plain sight. They all ran as fast as possible across the road, until they came to the hotel where Willis was once again entrenched. Once there, Bodie, Murphy, and Benny broke right, while Jax and the other two members of the team broke left. They would each circle the hotel, then enter from the rear. By then, Craine would be there with the rest of the team, and they should be able to take them out easily.

That was the theory, anyway.

Bodie was in the lead and was perhaps halfway around the hotel when he heard the scream. It was a woman's scream, the sort of scream Bodie had heard once too often in London after the outbreak had started. It was the sort of sound he'd never get used to. He froze for a moment, but when the scream broke off abruptly, he was running before he'd made a conscious decision to move, with Murphy and Benny close behind him.

They rounded the corner of the hotel to find a group of people gathered around a small outbuilding at the back. Five armed men surrounded three figures: Willis, a woman Bodie didn't recognize, but must be Lily's aunt, and a scrawny bloke with close cropped hair. The scrawny bloke had his hands tied behind him, and Willis had him by one arm, and seemed about to throw him into the outbuilding, while the woman struggled to stop him.

It took Bodie nearly ten seconds to realize the scrawny bloke was Doyle. When he did, all thought of strategy and tactics and proper procedure deserted him. He roared, and ran forward, shooting short controlled bursts at the men on the edges.

Two of the men fell, and the others turned and started firing back. Bodie ignored the bullets. He could see the woman and Doyle continue to struggle with Willis. Bodie was maybe ten feet away, when the most extraordinary thing happened.

The woman planted her feet, grabbed Willis by the front of his jacket and knocked him off his feet with the sweep of one leg. Bodie couldn't have done it neater himself.

She didn't stop there, though. She opened the door of the outbuilding a crack, kicked Willis inside, and slammed the door shut. Within seconds, there was a horrendous sound of tearing and breaking and Willis' screams.

Willis' men stopped firing as the screams peaked and stopped. Bodie pointed his gun at the nearest one.

"Drop it. Or do I have to kill you all this time?" The man, the one Bodie had stopped from getting to the Magazine, stared at him intently, before he finally let his weapon fall from his hands. Murphy and Benny moved in to bind the other two, as Jax and his team emerged from the other side.

Jack Craine and his group were the last to arrive, long after the screams from the outbuilding had faded to nothing and Willis' men had been hustled into the hotel.

"I say," Craine said. "Are we too late?"

"My niece," the woman demanded. "Is she safe?"

Bodie heard Murphy take the woman, Aunt Grace he supposed, off to the side and assure her that her niece was safe. He sensed Craine and his men setting a perimeter and making sure the infected in the outbuilding who'd just made a meal of Willis wasn't about to break out. He knew Jax was hovering at the sidelines, checking that he wasn't about to fall over from shock.

Bodie ignored them all.

There was only one person he was interested in: the man who stared back at him with a huge grin.

"Could use some help with the hands, mate," Doyle said with a shrug, and Bodie realized that his hands were still bound behind him. He pulled his knife from his boot and cut the ropes. "Thanks," Doyle said, as he rubbed his reddened wrists.

Bodie didn't let him say any more. Didn't give him a chance to treat him just like a colleague, a mate, a friend who'd helped him out of a tight spot. Doyle was more, so very much more. He'd thought he might love Doyle before, but he fucking knew he did now.

He grabbed Doyle, wrapped his arms around him and held him as tightly as he could. He buried his face in the crook of Doyle's neck and squeezed his eyes shut as he took in Doyle's warmth, breathed in his scent.

"I thought you were dead," he said, over and over again. "I thought you were dead." He couldn't stop saying the words. Kept repeating them as if they were a touchstone, a mantra, a spell that could erase the time that he really had thought Doyle was dead.

Doyle held him back just as tightly and stroked his back.

"I'm not dead, mate," Doyle whispered into his ear. "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."

"You fucking better not."

"I'm sorry to disturb this touching scene," Murphy said, almost apologetically, "but we're just about ready to move out."

"Fuck off, Murph," said Bodie.

"Yeah, Murph," Doyle said, his voice a growl that Bodie could feel in his diaphragm. "Fuck off."

Murphy, clearly knowing when he was beaten, fucked off, leaving them still wrapped around each other.

"They're going to start talking," Doyle said, after another minute.

"Let them."

"They're going to come to certain conclusions."

"I don't care."

"Just thought I'd make sure," Doyle said, and then squeezed him so tightly Bodie felt like he'd been squashed.

As declarations of love go, it wouldn't get past the Romantic poets, but Bodie wouldn't have traded it for all the sonnets in England.

* * *

  
Doyle drifted up through a pleasant haze. For the first time in weeks, he felt safe, he felt comfortable, he felt happy. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and pulled the blanket over his head, wondering if he could manage to sleep for twenty-four hours straight. The sheer luxury of that sounded delicious.

As he was drifting off, the muted sound of voices pulled him back to consciousness.

"—things going down there?" Bodie's voice made Doyle smile. He was never again going to take that voice for granted. He was going to enjoy every single word Bodie said from this point forward. Even the stupid ones. Possibly even especially the stupid ones.

"Things are settling down." That was Murphy. "Grace has already set up a bench in the lab. The rest of the boffins all seem excited, so she might really be onto something. A vaccine, at least. Maybe even a cure."

"And Lily?"

"She's still shaken up. Who wouldn't be, after all she's been through? But the other kids seem to be looking after her. She'll be all right. As much as any of us will."

There was a pause, and Doyle heard the sound of footsteps growing nearer.

"How's Goldilocks doing?" Murphy asked, his voice much closer this time.

"Knackered." Bodie chuckled, and Doyle thought that sound might be even finer than his speaking voice. "Told me he was fine, he just needed to sit down for a minute. Next thing I knew, he'd collapsed on my bed and was snoring."

"You'll need to get some kip soon, too." Murphy sounded concerned. "When was the last time you got any sleep?"

"I'll put my head down soon enough." Doyle frowned. How long _had_ it been since Bodie had slept? "Put that down here, would you?" There was a thunk and the sound of scraping, like a piece of furniture being dragged into place.

"Thanks, Murph. I owe you one."

"You owe me more than one. Just don't let anyone know I helped you nick the chief boffin's extra large camp bed." Leave it to Bodie, Doyle thought.

"He'll never notice it. Sleeps alone, doesn't he?"

"I take it you're not intending to sleep alone."

"Take what you like."

"That's what I thought." Doyle could practically see the grin on Murphy's face, the sly bastard. It was a good thing Murph was a friend, or Doyle wouldn't have liked his chances against Bodie. "It's a good thing you've got the only private living quarters in the whole castle." He heard Murphy begin walking away. "Look after Doyle, won't you? He looks like he's been through the wars."

"We all have, Murph," Bodie called back. Then there was the slam of a door and they were alone.

Doyle forced himself to sit up, struggling with the blanket wrapped around his legs.

"Good morning."

"Evening is more like it," Bodie said. "And how long have you been awake?"

"Long enough." Doyle smiled. "Are you going to look after me, then?"

"That's what I have been doing. Look at that." Bodie pointed to a wood and canvas monstrosity sitting on the floor of the Magazine, beside the much smaller camp bed Doyle was on.

Bodie was looking far too pleased with himself. Doyle couldn't resist teasing him.

"What's that when it's at home, then?"

"It's a bed, you silly git. One big enough for both of us."

"Presuming a lot, aren't you?"

"Nah." Bodie smirked. "We're made for each other."

"Well," Doyle smirked back, "I doubt anyone else would have you."

"Of course not." Bodie stuck his nose in the air. "No one else has your finely developed sense of taste."

"I love it when you go all posh."

"I hope that's not the only thing you love about me."

"There is your sparkling personality."

"You must have me confused with another bloke," Bodie said, laughing. "Come on, then. Let's try this thing out."

Doyle fought for a moment with the blanket, narrowly avoiding having an inanimate object get the better of him, then waited while Bodie arranged the bedding he'd acquired who knew where on the new bed. When it was all organized to Bodie's satisfaction, he made his wobbly way over to it, and they both collapsed on it, side by side.

It wasn't the most comfortable bed Doyle had ever encountered, but it had the virtue of having Bodie in it. For a long minute, Doyle simply lay there, listening to Bodie's breathing, concentrating on the press of Bodie's arm into his, on the way their thighs touched, taking simple pleasure in Bodie's presence.

"Christ, I missed you," he finally said, turning slightly and wrapping one arm around Bodie's chest.

Bodie didn't say anything in response. He simply surrounded Doyle with both arms and squeezed him so tightly Doyle was having trouble drawing a breath. Finally, one of Bodie's hands drifted up his back, caressing his neck, then the back of his head.

"I miss the hair," Bodie said, his voice a low rumble in Doyle's ear.

"It'll grow back," Doyle said, knowing this wasn't about his hair at all.

"I know."

"I'm not entirely delicate, you know," Doyle said, when it appeared Bodie wasn't going to do anything but hold him.

"You were in a coma."

"I got better."

"It still doesn't seem quite real to me. I thought you were dead for days. For weeks."

"If I was dead, I couldn't do this." Doyle pulled back slightly, then kissed Bodie as fiercely as he could manage. Bodie froze for a moment, and Doyle nearly stopped, wondering if they'd been through too much, if what they'd had before hadn't been strong enough to survive the end of the world. But then Bodie's mouth opened to his, and Bodie's hands were at his back, on his arms, on his arse.

Still side by side, Doyle rushed to push up Bodie's shirt, to open his flies, to feel his skin. He gasped as Bodie pushed his jeans down his thighs and brought their cocks together. He bit down hard on Bodie's shoulder as Bodie stroked the two of them together.

They neither of them lasted long. They were both bruised and knackered and suffering from too much stress. Doyle went over first, clutching Bodie's rucked up shirt as Bodie took them to the short strokes. As he recovered his breath, Bodie went off. Doyle held him tightly as Bodie shuddered and seized Doyle's waist and made a sound suspiciously like a sob.

Doyle continued to hold Bodie, Bodie's face a welcome warmth in the crook of his neck. He held him until the stickiness on their bellies began to cool and he needed to pull the blankets up over them both.

Wrapped in scratchy wool, he kept a tight grip on his partner, waiting until whatever tempests raged inside Bodie had calmed to a light summer breeze, until Bodie's hold on him eased from a death grip to a soothing embrace.

"I'm sticking by you, Bodie," he whispered in Bodie's ear. "You won't lose me again."

"I'd better not." Bodie's voice was hoarse and tentative. "I'd better bloody not."

They both drifted into an easy sleep, and for the first time since Cowley ordered an all-hands call out to Essex, their dreams were not of plague and infection, of death and loss, but of hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to draycevixen for invaluable plot advice, ancastar for her usual impeccable beta skills, and izzie7 for the helpful Brit check. And to gblvr, my undying gratitude for inspiring the story at Close Quarters when she said there should totally be a Pros/28 Days Later crossover, and then creating such kickass art to go with the it. Thanks also to my lovely co-mod, [info]callistosh65, who didn't run away screaming when the idea for running a Pros Big Bang went from idle musings at a con to "we really should do it." It's been a pleasure, babe.


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